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mil_tactics_continued_pretraining.csv | Wartime sexual violence | The fear of consequences and threat of exclusion felt by the victims makes it difficult to establish clear figures of war rape incidents and to hold perpetrators accountable for the crimes they have committed, as has been claimed with regards to war rape in Darfur: "Underreporting of cases may be attributed to the stigma associated with rape, shame and fear of reprisal, denial that rape occurs, intimidation by many Government officials and the inability to access some conflict-affected areas". This points to another difficulty victims of war rape have to deal with at the societal level. The perpetrators of rape are often officials or otherwise affiliated with the state's institutions, which might make reporting of assaults appear useless.
Psychiatric care: Disrupted healthcare sectors is a term the World Health Organization describes for medical facilities that are destroyed or partially destroyed in war torn areas. Health care facilities are essential for the establishment of support systems for rape victims. Psychological support units are also hampered by the lack of material resources available to the medical community on-ground. Medical practitioners and health-care workers face daunting challenges in conflict and post-conflict area. As the WHO explains, "healthcare delivery fragments and deteriorates, memory and knowledge are eroded, and power disperses".: 7 War-torn societies in immediate post-conflict zones have broken medical infrastructure such as: destroyed or partially destroyed hospitals (or clinics); non-functioning hospitals; poor, scarce or inadequate medical supplies, lack of running water, and scarce or lack of electricity. Dismantling weapons from armed rebels and other groups are prioritized in immediate post-conflict situations which in effect de-prioritizes the immediate physical and psychiatric care that war rape victims are in urgent need of. "If we do not have the capacity to prevent war, we have a collective responsibility to better understand and treat its psychiatric, medical, and social consequences." Access to psychological health services further causes inequity for survivors of war rape who are at the margins of society living in chronic poverty or located in rural regions. Healthcare and psychiatric care is a key component to the healing processes of war rape.
Impact:
Former Yugoslavia: Evidence of the magnitude of rape in Bosnia and Herzegovina prompted the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) to deal openly with these abuses. The issue of rape during armed conflict was brought to the attention of the United Nations after the breakup of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, in conjunction with the Bosnian war. Reports of sexual violence during the Bosnian War (1992–1995) and Kosovo War (1998–1999), part of the Yugoslav wars, a series of conflicts from 1991 to 1999, have been described as "especially alarming". During the Kosovo War thousands of Kosovo Albanian women and girls became victims of sexual violence by Serbian paramilitaries, soldiers or policemen. The majority of rapes were gang rapes. Following the entry of NATO in the Kosovo War, rapes of Serbian, Albanian, and Roma women were committed by ethnic Albanians. Rapes by members of the Kosovo Liberation Army have also been documented.
It has been estimated that during the Bosnian War between 20,000 and 50,000 women were raped. The majority of the rape victims were Muslim women raped by Serbian soldiers. Although men also became victim of sexual violence, war rape was disproportionately directed against women who were (gang) raped in the streets, in their homes and/or in front of family members. Sexual violence occurred in multiple ways, including rape with objects, such as broken glass bottles, guns and truncheons. War rape occurred as a matter of official orders as part of ethnic cleansing, to displace the targeted ethnic group out of the region.
During the Bosnian War, the existence of deliberately created "rape camps" was reported. The reported aim of these camps was to impregnate the Muslim and Croatian women held captive. It has been reported that often women were kept in confinement until the late stage of their pregnancy. This occurred in the context of a patrilineal society, in which children inherit their father's ethnicity, hence the "rape camps" aimed at the birth of a new generation of Serb children. According to the Women's Group Tresnjevka more than 35,000 women and children were held in such Serb-run "rape camps".
During the Kosovo War thousands of Kosovar Albanian women and girls became victims of sexual violence. War rape was used as a weapon of war and an instrument of systematic ethnic cleansing; rape was used to terrorize the civilian population, extort money from families, and force people to flee their homes. According to a 2000 Human Rights Watch report war rape in the Kosovo War can generally be subdivided into three categories: rapes in women's homes, rapes during fighting, and rapes in detention. The majority of the perpetrators were Serbian paramilitaries, but they also included Serbian special police or Yugoslav army soldiers. Most rapes were gang rapes involving at least two perpetrators. Rapes occurred frequently in the presence, and with the acquiescence, of military officers. Soldiers, police, and paramilitaries often raped their victims in the full view of numerous witnesses.
Mass rape in the Bosnian War: During the Bosnian War, Bosnian Serb forces conducted a sexual abuse strategy against thousands of Bosnian Muslim girls and women which became known as a "mass rape phenomenon". No exact figures on how many women and children were systematically raped by the Serb forces in various camps were established, but estimates range from 20,000 to 50,000. Mass rape mostly occurred in eastern Bosnia (especially during the Foča and Višegrad massacres), and in Grbavica during the Siege of Sarajevo. Numerous Bosnian Serb officers, soldiers and other participants were indicted or convicted of rape as a war crime by the ICTY and the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The events inspired the Golden Bear winner at the 56th Berlin International Film Festival in 2006, called Grbavica.
Rwandan genocide: During the Rwandan genocide, from April until July 1994, hundreds of thousands of women and girls were raped or became the victims of other forms of sexual violence. Although no explicit written orders to commit rape and other acts of sexual violence have been found, evidence suggests that military leaders encouraged or ordered their men to rape the Tutsis, and they also condoned the acts which were already taking place, without making efforts to stop them.
Compared to other conflicts, the sexual violence in Rwanda stands out in terms of the organised nature of the propaganda that contributed significantly to fuelling sexual violence against Tutsi women, the very public nature of the rapes and the level of brutality towards the women. Anne-Marie de Brouwer concludes that considering the massive scale and public nature of war rape during the Rwandan genocide, "it is difficult to imagine anybody in Rwanda who was not aware of the sexual violence taking place."
In 1998, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda made the landmark decision that the war rape during the Rwanda genocide was an element of the crime of genocide. The Trial Chamber held that "sexual assault formed an integral part of the process of destroying the Tutsi ethnic group and that the rape was systematic and had been perpetrated against Tutsi women only, manifesting the specific intent required for those acts to constitute genocide."
In his 1996 report, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Rwanda, Rene Degni-Segui stated that "rape was the rule and its absence was the exception." The report also stated that "rape was systematic and was used as a "weapon" by the perpetrators of the massacres. This can be estimated from the number and nature of the victims as well as from the forms of rape." A 2000 report prepared by the Organisation of African Unity's International Panel of Eminent Personalities concluded that "we can be certain that almost all females who survived the genocide were direct victims of rape or other sexual violence, or were profoundly affected by it".
The Special Rapporteur on Rwanda estimated in his 1996 report that between 2,000 and 5,000 pregnancies resulted from war rape, and that between 250,000 and 500,000 Rwandese women and girls had been raped. Rwanda is a patriarchal society and children therefore take the ethnicity of the father, underlining the fact that war rape occurred in the context of genocide.
Within the context of the Rwandan genocide, victims of sexual violence were predominantly attacked on the basis of their gender and ethnicity. The victims were mostly Tutsi women and girls, of all ages, while men were only seldom the victims of war rape. Women were demonized in the anti-Tutsi propaganda prior to the 1994 genocide.
The December 1990 issue of the newspaper Kangura published the "Ten Commandments", four of which portrayed Tutsi women as tools of the Tutsi community, as sexual weapons that would be used by the Tutsi to weaken and ultimately to destroy the Hutu men. Gender based propaganda also included cartoons printed in newspapers that portrayed Tutsi women as sex objects. Examples of gender based hate propaganda used to incite war rape included statements by perpetrators such as "You Tutsi women think that you are too good for us" and "Let us see what a Tutsi woman tastes like". |
mil_tactics_continued_pretraining.csv | Wartime sexual violence | Within the context of the Rwandan genocide, victims of sexual violence were predominantly attacked on the basis of their gender and ethnicity. The victims were mostly Tutsi women and girls, of all ages, while men were only seldom the victims of war rape. Women were demonized in the anti-Tutsi propaganda prior to the 1994 genocide.
The December 1990 issue of the newspaper Kangura published the "Ten Commandments", four of which portrayed Tutsi women as tools of the Tutsi community, as sexual weapons that would be used by the Tutsi to weaken and ultimately to destroy the Hutu men. Gender based propaganda also included cartoons printed in newspapers that portrayed Tutsi women as sex objects. Examples of gender based hate propaganda used to incite war rape included statements by perpetrators such as "You Tutsi women think that you are too good for us" and "Let us see what a Tutsi woman tastes like". Victims of war rape during the Rwandan genocide also included Hutu women considered moderates, such as Hutu women married to Tutsi men and Hutu women politically affiliated with the Tutsi. War rape also occurred regardless of ethnicity or political affiliation, with young or beautiful women being targeted based on their gender only.
Sexual violence against men occurred significantly less frequently, but it frequently included the mutilation of their genitals, which were often displayed in public. The perpetrators of war rape during the Rwandan genocide were mainly members of the Hutu militia, the "Interahamwe". Rapes were also committed by military personnel within the Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR), including the Presidential Guard, and civilians.
Sexual violence against women and girls during the Rwandan genocide included: rape, gang rape, sexual slavery (either collectively or individually through "forced marriages"), rape with objects such as sticks and weapons often leading to the victim's death, sexual mutilation of, in particular, breasts, vaginas or buttocks, often during or following rape. Pregnant women were not spared from sexual violence and on many occasions victims were killed following rape. Many women were raped by men who knew they were HIV positive and it has been suggested that there were deliberate attempts to transmit the virus to Tutsi women and their families. War rape occurred all over the country and it was frequently perpetrated in plain view of others, at sites such as schools, churches, roadblocks, government buildings or in the bush. Some women were kept as personal slaves for years after the genocide, and they were eventually forced to move to neighbouring countries after the genocide along with their captors.
The long-term effects of war rape in Rwanda on its victims include social isolation (the social stigma attached to rape meant that some husbands left their wives who had become victims of war rape, or that the victims became unmarriageable), unwanted pregnancies and babies (some women resorted to self-induced abortions), sexually transmitted diseases, including syphilis, gonorrhoea and HIV/AIDS (access to anti-retroviral drugs remains limited).
The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, established in 1994 after the Rwandan Genocide, has only brought three perpetrators before the Tribunal, with the first conviction in 1998.
Sri Lankan Civil War: During the Sri Lankan Civil War, multiple Human Rights Organizations reported cases of rape, violence and disappearance of women in the 1990s, claiming to be committed by security forces. Government officials, including the president, have denied the claims and agreed to co-operate with the investigations and prosecute whomever they find guilty. The UN Special Rapporteur has reported that individual investigations and proceedings relating to these cases have commenced at the local magistrates courts.
Some of the notable cases of murdered raped victims and the massacres associated with the rape incidents are Krishanti Kumaraswamy, Arumaithurai Tharmaletchumi, Ida Carmelitta, Ilayathambi Tharsini, Murugesapillai Koneswary, Premini Thanuskodi, Sarathambal, Kumarapuram massacre and Vankalai massacre.
Philippines: Mindanao and Sulu: On 24 September 1974, in the Malisbong massacre the Armed Forces of the Philippines slaughtered 1,766 Moro Muslim civilians who were praying at a Mosque in addition to mass raping Moro girls who had been taken aboard a boat.
Bangladesh: Chittagong Hill Tracts: In the Chittagong Hill Tracts Bengali settlers and soldiers have raped native Jumma (Chakma) women "with impunity" with the Bangladeshi security forces doing little to protect the Jummas and instead assisting the rapists and settlers.
Kashmir conflict: Numerous scholars and human rights agencies assert that since the onset of the insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir in 1988, rape has been leveraged as a 'weapon of war' by Indian security forces comprising the Indian Army, Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and Border Security personnel.
21st century: According to Amnesty International, documented cases of war rape in the early twenty-first century include incidents in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Colombia, Iraq, Sudan, and Nepal.
Commenting on the rape of women and children in African conflict zones, UNICEF said in 2008 that rape was no longer just perpetrated by combatants but also by civilians. According to UNICEF rape is common in countries affected by wars and natural disasters, drawing a link between the occurrence of sexual violence and significant uprooting of a society and the crumbling of social norms. UNICEF states that in Kenya reported cases of sexual violence doubled within days of post-election conflict erupting. According to UNICEF rape was prevalent in conflict zones in Sudan, Chad, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Democratic Republic of the Congo: In Eastern Congo, the prevalence and intensity of rape and other sexual violence is described as the worst in the world. A 2010 study found that 22% of men and 30% of women in Eastern Congo reported conflict-related sexual violence.
Since fighting broke out in 1998 tens of thousands of people have been raped in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It is estimated that there are as many as 200,000 surviving rape victims living in the Democratic Republic of the Congo today. War rape in the Democratic Republic of Congo has frequently been described as a "weapon of war" by commentators. Louise Nzigire, a local social worker, states that "this violence was designed to exterminate the population." Nzigire observes that rape has been a "cheap, simple weapon for all parties in the war, more easily obtainable than bullets or bombs." The rape of men is also common. Men who admit they were raped risk ostracism by their community, and criminal prosecution, because they may be seen as homosexual, which is a crime in 38 African countries.
Despite the peace process launched in 2003, sexual assault by soldiers from armed groups and the national army continues in the eastern provinces of the country. Evidence of war rape emerged when United Nations troops move into areas previously ravaged by war after the peace process started. Gang rape and rape with objects has been reported. The victims of war rape may suffer from incontinence and vaginal fistula as a result of particularly violent rape. Witness accounts include an instance of a woman who had the barrel of a gun inserted into her vagina, after which the soldier opened fire. Incontinence and vaginal fistula leads to the isolation of war rape victims from her community and access to reconstructive surgery is limited in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
More than 500 rapes were reported in Eastern Congo in August 2010, leading to an apology from Atul Khare that the UN peacekeepers had failed to protect the population from brutalisation. In 2020 the UN reported that in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a young man from Tanganyika Province was stripped naked, raped, and coerced by the Twa militia to rape his own mother. Similar violence against men and boys while in detention were also reported.
Darfur region in Sudan: A 19 October 2004 UN News Centre article titled "UNICEF adviser says rape in Darfur, Sudan continues with impunity" reported:
Armed militias in Sudan's strife-torn Darfur region are continuing to rape women and girls with impunity, an expert from the United Nations children's agency said today on her return from a mission to the region. Pamela Shifman, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) adviser on violence and sexual exploitation, said she heard dozens of harrowing accounts of sexual assaults – including numerous reports of gang-rapes – when she visited internally displaced persons (IDPs) at one camp and another settlement in North Darfur last week. "Rape is used as a weapon to terrorize individual women and girls, and also to terrorize their families and to terrorize entire communities," she said in an interview with the UN News Service. "No woman or girl is safe."
In the same article Pamela Shifman was reported to have said that:
Every woman or girl she spoke to had either endured sexual assault herself, or knew of someone who had been attacked, particularly when they left the relative safety of their IDP camp or settlement to find firewood.
Iraq War: Male prisoners of war may be subject to rape and sexual violence. Sexual violence against male prisoners of the Iraq War gained wide publicity after graphic photos documented such abuses on male Iraqi prisoners by US guards at Abu Ghraib prison, where prisoners were forced to humiliate themselves. American soldiers gang raped a 14-year-old Iraqi girl in the Mahmudiyah rape and killings. |
mil_tactics_continued_pretraining.csv | Wartime sexual violence | "Rape is used as a weapon to terrorize individual women and girls, and also to terrorize their families and to terrorize entire communities," she said in an interview with the UN News Service. "No woman or girl is safe."
In the same article Pamela Shifman was reported to have said that:
Every woman or girl she spoke to had either endured sexual assault herself, or knew of someone who had been attacked, particularly when they left the relative safety of their IDP camp or settlement to find firewood.
Iraq War: Male prisoners of war may be subject to rape and sexual violence. Sexual violence against male prisoners of the Iraq War gained wide publicity after graphic photos documented such abuses on male Iraqi prisoners by US guards at Abu Ghraib prison, where prisoners were forced to humiliate themselves. American soldiers gang raped a 14-year-old Iraqi girl in the Mahmudiyah rape and killings. US soldiers also sodomized children with women present when the women and children were arrested together and it was recorded on video tape according to Seymour Hersh. An Iraqi girl, 14 years old, was raped multiple times by US guards according to The Guardian and an Iraqi woman called Noor sent a letter from the prison detailing her rape by US military policeman which was verified by US Major General Antonio Taguba in his report. US soldiers forced Iraqi male detainees at Abu Ghraib to engage in homosexual activities with each other and forced their anuses to make contact with each other's penises by piling them up on each other while their legs and hands were shackled and handcuffed. Iraqi female lawyer Amal Kadham Swadi interviewed an Iraqi woman raped by multiple American soldiers, telling her to keep it a secret, saying "We have daughters and husbands. For God's sake don't tell anyone about this." She had stitches on her arm from injuries when she tried to resist the rape and these were seen by Swadi. She was held in Baghdad in November 2003 at the former police compound al-Kharkh which was used as a US military base.
2011 – present Iraqi insurgency: The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has employed sexual violence against women and men in a manner that has been described as "terrorism". ISIL has utilized sexual violence in order to undermine a sense of security within communities, as well as to raise funds through the sale of captives into sexual slavery. According to The Wall Street Journal, ISIL appeals to apocalyptic beliefs and claims "justification by a Hadith that they interpret as portraying the revival of slavery as a precursor to the end of the world". In late 2014, ISIL released a pamphlet on the treatment of female slaves. The New York Times said in August 2015 that "[t]he systematic rape of women and girls from the Yazidi religious minority has become deeply enmeshed in the organization and the radical theology of the Islamic State in the year since the group announced it was reviving slavery as an institution."
2011 Libyan civil war: The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Luis Moreno Ocampo, claimed that there is evidence that Gaddafi's troops used rape as a weapon during the Libyan civil war. He also said, "Apparently, he [Gaddafi] decided to punish, using rape," while witnesses confirmed that the Libyan government also purchased a large number of Viagra-like drugs. The Libyan government, on the other hand, does not recognize the ICC's jurisdiction.
Afghan Taliban: In 2015, Amnesty International reported that the Afghan Taliban had engaged in mass murders and gang rapes of Afghan civilians in Kunduz. Taliban fighters killed and raped the female relatives of police commanders and soldiers. The Taliban also raped and killed midwives who they accused of providing reproductive health services to women in the city. One female human rights activist described the situation:When the Taliban asserted their control over Kunduz, they claimed to be bringing law and order and Shari'a to the city. But everything they've done has violated both. I don't know who can rescue us from this situation.
Rape in contemporary peace operations by UN peacekeepers: In contemporary conflict zones, international organizations, particularly the United Nations peacekeepers, have been involved in maintaining peace and stability in the area as well as distribute humanitarian aid to the local population. At present there are 16 Peace Operations directed by the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations. The peacekeepers are mainly composed of military personnel (but to a less number also the police) sent by governments of various member-states. However, over the course of their involvement in the field, peacekeepers have also been accused and at times found guilty of committing rape and other forms of sexual violence to the local population, in particular to women and children. Among all international staff in the conflict zone, United Nations peacekeepers (handled by the Department of Peacekeeping Operations) have been most frequently identified as the perpetrators of rape.
Motivations for rape and sexual abuse by peacekeepers: Like traditional military ventures, peacekeepers are deployed in highly unstable areas similar to war zones, where there is absence of the rule of law, disintegration of society and great psychological and economic hardships. Having an image of wealth and authority, peacekeepers can easily exercise power over the local population, which is often abused.
Moreover, as members of their respective country's militaries, peacekeepers also carry with them in the peace operations the "hyper-masculine culture" that encourages sexual exploitation and abuse. The motivations for rape differ from the traditional perpetrators (government and rebel forces) in that rape is not part of a war strategy that contributes to fulfilling the organization's mission, but rather more as means to relieve the perpetrators' sexual urges most often related to the military culture. Apart from putting the victim under the threat of physical violence, perpetrators induce sexual acts from the victim through payment, and granting or denying humanitarian aid.
Cases of rape and sexual abuse in peace operations: UN peacekeepers' involvement in rape was found as early as 1993 during the Bosnian genocide, where peacekeepers were found to regularly visit a Serb-run brothel in Sarajevo that housed Bosniak and Croat women who were forced to become prostitutes. According to the Outlook, sexual misconduct by Indian soldiers and officers on UN duty in Congo raised disturbing questions. In the early twenty-first century, several UN soldiers in Haiti have been accused and convicted of raping boys as young as 14 years. In one instance, Uruguayan UN soldiers were accused in 2011 of raping a Haitian boy, sparking protests that called for the withdrawal of UN peacekeeping forces. In Congo in 2004, peacekeepers from Uruguay, Morocco, Tunisia, South Africa and Nepal have faced 68 cases of rape, prostitution and pedophilia. The investigation resulted in the jailing of six Nepalese troops. In Sudan, the Egyptian contingent was accused of raping six women when the civilians took shelter at the peacekeepers' headquarters in order to flee from the fighting. Allegations of rape of young women and children have also been launched against UN peacekeepers in South Sudan. In Mali, four UN peacekeepers from Chad were involved in the rape of a woman. Members of the Moroccan contingent faced rape charges during the course of their duties at the UN mission in Ivory Coast.
Punitive measures: The most common challenge in reprimanding perpetrators is the significant underreporting of the issue mainly due to three reasons. First, the victims do not report or file complaints due to fears of revenge from the offender(s), denial of aid and the social stigma against rape victims in the victims' own community. Second, UN higher officials previously dismissed such allegations as "boys will be boys". Third, fellow peacekeepers are accustomed to the "wall of silence" in the spirit of brotherhood characteristic of military culture but also to protect the reputation of their sending government. As a consequence, whistleblowers are often stigmatised.
However, if there would indeed be reports, the UN instituted the Conduct and Discipline Teams (CDTs) to conduct an investigation referring the allegations for serious offense to the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS). When found guilty, the course of the specific disciplinary action is dependent on the employee status of the offender. UN civilian staff and personnel have functional immunity that can only be waived by the UN Secretary-General. In the case of military personnel, they are subject to the jurisdiction of their respective sending governments. The usual practice for offending soldiers has been to repatriate the personnel and prosecute them in their home country. In several cases, punitive measures are imposed such as demotion or dishonorable dismissal. However, very few among guilty personnel have faced criminal charges in their home countries after repatriation.
Myanmar: In 2016–2017 and beyond, many Rohingya Muslim women were raped by Burmese soldiers during the Rohingya genocide. Mass rape has been a central weapon of war against the ethnic minorities by the Myanmar military. According to the 2018 report of the UN Secretary-General on conflict-related sexual violence, the mass rape of Rohingya girls and women were not a culmination of individual choices to rape nor an unfortunate by-product of war but a part of the Myanmar military policy strategically carried out to forcibly remove the Rohingya ethnic group.
Tigray: In the Tigray War of 2020–2022 in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia, there were widespread reports of rape and other sexual abuse. Europe External Programme with Africa (EEPA) described an incident of six young girls raped in Mekelle in which the Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) soldiers justified the rape on the grounds that "[the girls]' father is Dr. |
mil_tactics_continued_pretraining.csv | Wartime sexual violence | Myanmar: In 2016–2017 and beyond, many Rohingya Muslim women were raped by Burmese soldiers during the Rohingya genocide. Mass rape has been a central weapon of war against the ethnic minorities by the Myanmar military. According to the 2018 report of the UN Secretary-General on conflict-related sexual violence, the mass rape of Rohingya girls and women were not a culmination of individual choices to rape nor an unfortunate by-product of war but a part of the Myanmar military policy strategically carried out to forcibly remove the Rohingya ethnic group.
Tigray: In the Tigray War of 2020–2022 in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia, there were widespread reports of rape and other sexual abuse. Europe External Programme with Africa (EEPA) described an incident of six young girls raped in Mekelle in which the Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) soldiers justified the rape on the grounds that "[the girls]' father is Dr. Debretsion and [the soldiers father]' is Dr. Abiy. We are not all the same", in reference to the two main political leaders of the conflict, Debretsion Gebremichael, the deposed leader of the Tigray Region, and Abiy Ahmed, the prime minister of Ethiopia. Weyni Abraha from Yikono, a Tigrayan women's rights group, viewed the sexual violence as a deliberate use of rape as a weapon of war, stating "This is being done purposely to break the morale of the people, threaten them and make them give up the fight."
Arguments for sexual violence in the Tigray War constituting a deliberate campaign satisfying the definition of genocide include the well-organised command hierarchy of the ENDF as the largest contributor of armed forces to United Nations peacekeeping operations, the strict command hierarchy of the Eritrean Defence Forces (EDF) as the tool of a totalitarian state, testimonies about soldiers refusing to rape being punished, the systematic continuation of patterns of rape over six to seven months, and similarities with rape during the Bosnian War and during the Rwandan genocide.
Rape camps: A rape camp is a detention facility that is designed for or becomes a place where detainees are systematically and repeatedly raped, under the control and authority of state or non-state, armed or civilian, organisational structures.
Late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries:
Bangladesh Genocide: During the Bangladesh Liberation War, the Pakistani military used Army Camps as rape camps as a part of the genocide. The Australian doctor Geoffrey Davis who specialised in Abortions described in an interview with Bina D'costa about how the Pakistani military shelled hospitals and schools and segregated sexually matured women who were then taken to the compound made available for the troops.
Bosnian War: Rape camps set up by the Bosnian Serb authorities have been extensively documented in the Bosnian War.
Tigray War: Sexual violence in the Tigray War included three known rape camps: a rape camp in Hawzen established by the Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) and with rapists from the ENDF and Eritrean Defence Forces (EDF); an ENDF–EDF rape camp at a construction site during which queueing rapists took turns to hold the baby of the victim; and a third rape camp next to a river.
Forced prostitution and sexual slavery in war: Forced prostitution and sexual slavery are distinct as forms of war rape, as they entail more than the opportunistic rape by soldiers of women captives. Instead, women and girls are forced into sexual slavery, in some cases for prolonged periods. This is defined by the UN as "the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised, including sexual access through rape or other forms of sexual violence". War time forced prostitution takes several forms ranging from individual trafficking by armed forces to the institutionalization of the act of rape by military or civil authorities. The term 'forced prostitution' is often used in the press to refer to women and girls displaced by war who are forced to engage in prostitution to survive.
Heraldic penis controversy: In 2007, commander Karl Engelbrektson decided that the lion's penis in the coat of arms of the Nordic Battlegroup had to be removed. In a February 2008 interview with Sveriges Radio, Engelbrektsson revealed that contrary to initial media reports which stated that the decision was made in response to complaints by female soldiers, it was he who made the decision, based on the 2000 United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace, and security. Since civilian women are often sexually assaulted in the war zones of the world, the commander did not consider the depiction of a penis appropriate on a uniform which was worn into battle. The decision was questioned by some Swedish heraldists, with Vladimir Sagerlund asserting that coats of arms which contain pictures of lions without penises were historically given to those who had betrayed the Swedish Crown. The state heraldist Henrik Klackenberg complained by stating that his heraldry unit should have been consulted before such a change was made, but he did not intend to take any legal action. The controversy attracted attention from countries around the world.
See also: Gendercide
Genocidal rape
Raptio, the historic term for the large-scale abduction of women during wars
Sexual slavery
Total war
Violence against women
White Terror (Spain)
References:
Citations:
Bibliography:
Further reading: Sjoberg, Laura (22 November 2016). Women as Wartime Rapists: Beyond Sensation and Stereotyping. New York University Press. ISBN 978-0-8147-2927-4 – via Google Books.
Skjelsbæk, Inger (2011). The Political Psychology of War Rape: Studies from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-67117-0.
Lewis, Dustin A. (23 July 2009). "Unrecognized Victims: Sexual Violence Against Men in Conflict Settings Under International Law". Wisconsin International Law Journal. 27 (1): 1–49. SSRN 1404574.
"IHL Primer on Sexual Violence". International Humanitarian Law Research Initiative, June 2009.
Kevin Gerard Neill. "Duty, Honor, Rape: Sexual Assault Against Women During War". Journal of International Women's Studies.
Kathryn Farr. "Extreme War Rape in Today's Civil-war-torn States". Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, New York City, 11 August 2007.
Roberts, Mary Louise (2013). What Soldiers Do: Sex and the American GI in World War II France. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-92309-3.
Our Bodies, Their Battlefield: What War Does to Women (London: William Collins, 2020. ISBN 978-0-00-830000-5) |
mil_tactics_continued_pretraining.csv | Weapon | History: The use of weapons has been a major driver of cultural evolution and human history up to today since weapons are a type of tool that is used to dominate and subdue autonomous agents such as animals and, by doing so, allow for an expansion of the cultural niche, while simultaneously other weapon users (i.e., agents such as humans, groups, and cultures) are able to adapt to the weapons of enemies by learning, triggering a continuous process of competitive technological, skill, and cognitive improvement (arms race).
Prehistoric: The use of objects as weapons has been observed among chimpanzees, leading to speculation that early hominids used weapons as early as five million years ago. However, this cannot be confirmed using physical evidence because wooden clubs, spears, and unshaped stones would have left an ambiguous record. The earliest unambiguous weapons to be found are the Schöningen spears, eight wooden throwing spears dating back more than 300,000 years. At the site of Nataruk in Turkana, Kenya, numerous human skeletons dating to 10,000 years ago may present evidence of traumatic injuries to the head, neck, ribs, knees, and hands, including obsidian projectiles embedded in the bones that might have been caused by arrows and clubs during conflict between two hunter-gatherer groups. But the interpretation of warfare at Nataruk has been challenged due to conflicting evidence.
Ancient history: The earliest ancient weapons were evolutionary improvements of late Neolithic implements, but significant improvements in materials and crafting techniques led to a series of revolutions in military technology.
The development of metal tools began with copper during the Copper Age (about 3,300 BC) and was followed by the Bronze Age, leading to the creation of the Bronze Age sword and similar weapons.
During the Bronze Age, the first defensive structures and fortifications appeared as well, indicating an increased need for security. Weapons designed to breach fortifications followed soon after, such as the battering ram, which was in use by 2500 BC.
The development of ironworking around 1300 BC in Greece had an important impact on the development of ancient weapons. It was not the introduction of early Iron Age swords, however, as they were not superior to their bronze predecessors, but rather the domestication of the horse and widespread use of spoked wheels by c. 2000 BC. This led to the creation of the light, horse-drawn chariot, whose improved mobility proved important during this era. Spoke-wheeled chariot usage peaked around 1300 BC and then declined, ceasing to be militarily relevant by the 4th century BC.
Cavalry developed once horses were bred to support the weight of a human. The horse extended the range and increased the speed of attacks.
Alexander's conquest saw the increased use of spears and shields in the Middle East and Western Asia as a result Greek culture spread which saw many Greek and other European weapons be used in these regions and as a result many of these weapons were adapted to fit their new use in war
In addition to land-based weaponry, warships, such as the trireme, were in use by the 7th century BC.
During the first First Punic War, the use of advanced warships contributed to a Roman victory over the Carthaginians.
Post-classical history: European warfare during post-classical history was dominated by elite groups of knights supported by massed infantry (both in combat and ranged roles). They were involved in mobile combat and sieges, which involved various siege weapons and tactics. Knights on horseback developed tactics for charging with lances, providing an impact on the enemy formations, and then drawing more practical weapons (such as swords) once they entered melee. By contrast, infantry, in the age before structured formations, relied on cheap, sturdy weapons such as spears and billhooks in close combat and bows from a distance. As armies became more professional, their equipment was standardized, and infantry transitioned to pikes. Pikes are normally seven to eight feet in length and used in conjunction with smaller sidearms (short swords).
In Eastern and Middle Eastern warfare, similar tactics were developed independent of European influences.
The introduction of gunpowder from Asia at the end of this period revolutionized warfare. Formations of musketeers, protected by pikemen, came to dominate open battles, and the cannon replaced the trebuchet as the dominant siege weapon.
The Ottoman used the cannon to destroy much of the fortifications at Constantinople which would change warfare as gunpowder became more available and technology improved
Modern history:
Early modern: The European Renaissance marked the beginning of the implementation of firearms in western warfare. Guns and rockets were introduced to the battlefield.
Firearms are qualitatively different from earlier weapons because they release energy from combustible propellants, such as gunpowder, rather than from a counterweight or spring. This energy is released very rapidly and can be replicated without much effort by the user. Therefore, even early firearms such as the arquebus were much more powerful than human-powered weapons. Firearms became increasingly important and effective during the 16th–19th centuries, with progressive improvements in ignition mechanisms followed by revolutionary changes in ammunition handling and propellant. During the American Civil War, new applications of firearms, including the machine gun and ironclad warship, emerged that would still be recognizable and useful military weapons today, particularly in limited conflicts. In the 19th century, warship propulsion changed from sail power to fossil fuel-powered steam engines.
Since the mid-18th century North American French-Indian war through the beginning of the 20th century, human-powered weapons were reduced from the primary weaponry of the battlefield to yielding gunpowder-based weaponry. Sometimes referred to as the "Age of Rifles", this period was characterized by the development of firearms for infantry and cannons for support, as well as the beginnings of mechanized weapons such as the machine gun. Artillery pieces such as howitzers were able to destroy masonry fortresses and other fortifications, and this single invention caused a revolution in military affairs, establishing tactics and doctrine that are still in use today.
World War I: An important feature of industrial age warfare was technological escalation – innovations were rapidly matched through replication or countered by another innovation.
World War I marked the entry of fully industrialized warfare as well as weapons of mass destruction (e.g., chemical and biological weapons), and new weapons were developed quickly to meet wartime needs. The technological escalation during World War I was profound, including the wide introduction of aircraft into warfare and naval warfare with the introduction of aircraft carriers. Above all, it promised the military commanders independence from horses and a resurgence in maneuver warfare through the extensive use of motor vehicles. The changes that these military technologies underwent were evolutionary but defined their development for the rest of the century.
Interwar: This period of innovation in weapon design continued in the interwar period (between WWI and WWII) with the continuous evolution of weapon systems by all major industrial powers. The major armament firms were Schneider-Creusot (based in France), Škoda Works (Czechoslovakia), and Vickers (Great Britain). The 1920s were committed to disarmament and the outlawing of war and poison gas, but rearmament picked up rapidly in the 1930s. The munitions makers responded nimbly to the rapidly shifting strategic and economic landscape. The main purchasers of munitions from the big three companies were Romania, Yugoslavia, Greece, and Turkey – and, to a lesser extent, Poland, Finland, the Baltic States, and the Soviet Union.
Criminalizing poison gas: Realistic critics understood that war could not really be outlawed, but its worst excesses might be banned. Poison gas became the focus of a worldwide crusade in the 1920s. Poison gas did not win battles, and the generals did not want it. The soldiers hated it far more intensely than bullets or explosive shells. By 1918, chemical shells made up 35 percent of French ammunition supplies, 25 percent of British, and 20 percent of American stock. The “Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous, or Other Gases and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare”, also known as the Geneva Protocol, was issued in 1925 and was accepted as policy by all major countries. In 1937, poison gas was manufactured in large quantities but not used except against nations that lacked modern weapons or gas masks.
World War II and postwar: Many modern military weapons, particularly ground-based ones, are relatively minor improvements to weapon systems developed during World War II. World War II marked perhaps the most frantic period of weapon development in the history of humanity. Massive numbers of new designs and concepts were fielded, and all existing technologies were improved between 1939 and 1945. The most powerful weapon invented during this period was the nuclear bomb; however, many other weapons influenced the world, such as jet aircraft and radar, but were overshadowed by the visibility of nuclear weapons and long-range rockets.
Nuclear weapons: Since the realization of mutual assured destruction (MAD), the nuclear option of all-out war is no longer considered a survivable scenario. During the Cold War in the years following World War II, both the United States and the Soviet Union engaged in a nuclear arms race. Each country and their allies continually attempted to out-develop each other in the field of nuclear armaments. Once the joint technological capabilities reached the point of being able to ensure the destruction of the Earth by 100 fold, a new tactic had to be developed. |
mil_tactics_continued_pretraining.csv | Weapon | Massive numbers of new designs and concepts were fielded, and all existing technologies were improved between 1939 and 1945. The most powerful weapon invented during this period was the nuclear bomb; however, many other weapons influenced the world, such as jet aircraft and radar, but were overshadowed by the visibility of nuclear weapons and long-range rockets.
Nuclear weapons: Since the realization of mutual assured destruction (MAD), the nuclear option of all-out war is no longer considered a survivable scenario. During the Cold War in the years following World War II, both the United States and the Soviet Union engaged in a nuclear arms race. Each country and their allies continually attempted to out-develop each other in the field of nuclear armaments. Once the joint technological capabilities reached the point of being able to ensure the destruction of the Earth by 100 fold, a new tactic had to be developed. With this realization, armaments development funding shifted back to primarily sponsoring the development of conventional arms technologies for support of limited wars rather than total war.
Types:
By user: – what person or unit uses the weapon
Personal weapons (or small arms) – designed to be used by a single person.
Light weapons – 'man-portable' weapons that may require a small team to operate.
Heavy weapons – artillery and similar weapons larger than light weapons (see SALW).
Crew served weapons – larger than personal weapons, requiring two or more people to operate correctly.
Fortification weapons – mounted in a permanent installation or used primarily within a fortification.
Mountain weapons – for use by mountain forces or those operating in difficult terrain.
Vehicle weapons – to be mounted on any type of combat vehicle.
Railway weapons – designed to be mounted on railway cars, including armored trains.
Aircraft weapons – carried on and used by some type of aircraft, helicopter, or other aerial vehicle.
Naval weapons – mounted on ships and submarines.
Space weapons – are designed to be used in or launched from space.
Autonomous weapons – are capable of accomplishing a mission with limited or no human intervention.
By function: – the construction of the weapon and the principle of operation
Antimatter weapons (theoretical) – would combine matter and antimatter to cause a powerful explosion.
Archery weapons – operate by using a tensioned string and a bent solid to launch a projectile.
Artillery – firearms capable of launching heavy projectiles over long distances.
Biological weapons – spread biological agents, causing disease or infection.
Chemical weapons – poison people and cause reactions.
Energy weapons – rely on concentrating forms of energy to attack, such as lasers or sonic attacks.
Explosive weapons – use a physical explosion to create a blast, concussion, or spread shrapnel.
Firearms – use a chemical charge to launch projectiles.
Improvised weapons – common objects reused as weapons, such as crowbars and kitchen knives.
Incendiary weapons – cause damage by fire.
Non-lethal weapons – designed to subdue without killing.
Magnetic weapons – use magnetic fields to propel projectiles or focus particle beams.
Melee weapons – operate as physical extensions of the user's body and directly impact a close target.
Blade weapons – designed to pierce or cut through skin, muscle, or bone and cause internal or external bleeding.
Blunt instruments – designed to break or fracture bones, produce concussions, create organ ruptures, or crush injuries.
Missiles – rockets that are guided to their target after launch. (Also a general term for projectile weapons.)
Loitering munitions – designed to loiter over a battlefield, striking once a target is located.
Nuclear weapons – use radioactive materials to create nuclear fission or nuclear fusion detonations
Ranged weapons – (unlike melee weapons) target a distant object or person.
Rockets – self-propelled projectiles.
Suicide weapons – exploit the willingness of their operators not surviving the attack.
By target: – the type of target the weapon is designed to attack
Anti-aircraft weapons – target missiles and aerial vehicles in flight.
Anti-fortification weapons – designed to target enemy installations.
Anti-personnel weapons – designed to attack people, either individually or in numbers.
Anti-radiation weapons – target sources of electronic radiation, particularly radar emitters.
Anti-satellite weapons – target orbiting satellites.
Anti-ship weapons – target ships and vessels on water.
Anti-submarine weapons – target submarines and other underwater targets.
Anti-tank weapons – designed to defeat armored targets.
Area denial weapons – target territory, making it unsafe or unsuitable for enemy use or travel.
Hunting weapons – weapons used to hunt game animals.
Infantry support weapons – designed to attack various threats to infantry units.
Siege engines – designed to break or circumvent heavy fortifications in siege warfare.
Manufacture of weapons: The arms industry is a global industry that involves the sale and manufacture of weaponry. It consists of a commercial industry involved in the research and development, engineering, production, and servicing of military material, equipment, and facilities. Many industrialized countries have a domestic arms industry to supply their own military forces, and some also have a substantial trade in weapons for use by their citizens for self-defense, hunting, or sporting purposes.
Contracts to supply a given country's military are awarded by governments, making arms contracts of substantial political importance. The link between politics and the arms trade can result in the development of a "military–industrial complex", where the armed forces, commerce, and politics become closely linked.
According to research institute SIPRI, the volume of international transfers of major weapons in 2010–2014 was 16 percent higher than in 2005–2009, and the arms sales of the world's 100 largest private arms-producing and military services companies totaled $420 billion in 2018.
Legislation: The production, possession, trade, and use of many weapons are controlled. This may be at a local or central government level or by international treaty. Examples of such controls include:
Gun laws: All countries have laws and policies regulating aspects such as the manufacture, sale, transfer, possession, modification, and use of small arms by civilians.
Countries that regulate access to firearms will typically restrict access to certain categories of firearms and then restrict the categories of persons who may be granted a license for access to such firearms. There may be separate licenses for hunting, sport shooting (a.k.a. target shooting), self-defense, collecting, and concealed carry, with different sets of requirements, permissions, and responsibilities.
Arms control laws: International treaties and agreements place restrictions on the development, production, stockpiling, proliferation, and usage of weapons, from small arms and heavy weapons to weapons of mass destruction. Arms control is typically exercised through the use of diplomacy, which seeks to impose such limitations upon consenting participants, although it may also comprise efforts by a nation or group of nations to enforce limitations upon a non-consenting country.
Arms trafficking laws: Arms trafficking is the trafficking of contraband weapons and ammunition. What constitutes legal trade in firearms varies widely, depending on local and national laws. In 2001, the United Nations had made a protocol against the manufacturing and trafficking of illicit arms. This protocol made governments dispose illegal arms, and to licence new firearms being produced, to ensure them being legitimate. It was signed by 122 parties.
Lifecycle problems: There are a number of issues around the potential ongoing risks from deployed weapons, the safe storage of weapons, and their eventual disposal when they are no longer effective or safe.
Ocean dumping of unused weapons such as bombs, ordnance, landmines, and chemical weapons has been common practice by many nations and has created hazards.
Unexploded ordnance (UXO) are bombs, land mines, naval mines, and similar devices that did not explode when they were employed and still pose a risk for many years or decades.
Demining or mine clearance from areas of past conflict is a difficult process, but every year, landmines kill 15,000 to 20,000 people and severely maim countless more.
Nuclear terrorism was a serious concern after the fall of the Soviet Union, with the prospect of "loose nukes" being available. While this risk may have receded, similar situations may arise in the future.
In science fiction: Strange and exotic weapons are a recurring feature or theme in science fiction. In some cases, weapons first introduced in science fiction have now become a reality. Other science fiction weapons, such as force fields and stasis fields, remain purely fictional and are often beyond the realms of known physical possibility.
At its most prosaic, science fiction features an endless variety of sidearms, mostly variations on real weapons such as guns and swords. Among the best-known of these are the phaser used in the Star Trek television series, films, and novels, and the lightsaber and blaster featured in the Star Wars movies, comics, novels, and TV series.
In addition to adding action and entertainment value, weaponry in science fiction sometimes becomes a theme when it touches on deeper concerns, often motivated by contemporary issues. One example is science fiction that deals with weapons of mass destruction like doomsday devices.
See also:
References: Weapon Specialist – Weapon Expert. Bevic Huynh, New York, 2012.. Retrieved July 26, 2012.
External links: The dictionary definition of weapon at Wiktionary
Quotations related to Weapon at Wikiquote
Media related to Weapons at Wikimedia Commons |
mil_tactics_continued_pretraining.csv | Wikipedia:Verifiability | Responsibility for providing citations: All content must be verifiable. The burden to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who adds or restores material, and it is satisfied by providing an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports the contribution.
Using inline citations, provide reliable, published sources for all:
direct quotations,
material whose verifiability has been challenged
material whose verifiability is likely to be challenged, and
contentious matter about living and recently deceased persons.
The cited source must clearly support the material as presented in the article. Cite the source clearly, ideally giving page number(s)—though sometimes a section, chapter, or other division may be appropriate instead; see Wikipedia:Citing sources for details of how to do this.
Any material lacking an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports the material may be removed and should not be restored without an inline citation to a reliable source. Whether and how quickly material should be initially removed for not having an inline citation to a reliable source depends on the material and the overall state of the article. In some cases, editors may object if you remove material without giving them time to provide references. Consider adding a citation needed tag as an interim step. When tagging or removing material for lacking an inline citation, please state your concern that it may not be possible to find a published reliable source, and the material therefore may not be verifiable. If you think the material is verifiable, you are encouraged to provide an inline citation yourself before considering whether to remove or tag it.
Do not leave unsourced or poorly sourced material in an article if it might damage the reputation of living people or existing groups, and do not move it to the talk page. You should also be aware of how Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons also applies to groups.
Reliable sources:
What counts as a reliable source: A cited source on Wikipedia is often a specific portion of text (such as a short article or a page in a book). But when editors discuss sources (for example, to debate their appropriateness or reliability) the word source has four related meanings:
The work itself (the article, book: "That book looks like a useful source for this article.") and works like it ("An obituary can be a useful biographical source", "A recent source is better than an old one")
The creator of the work (the writer, journalist: "What do we know about that source's reputation?") and people like them ("A medical researcher is a better source than a journalist for medical claims").
The publication (for example, the newspaper, journal, magazine: "That source covers the arts.") and publications like them ("A newspaper is not a reliable source for medical claims").
The publisher of the work (for example, Cambridge University Press: "That source publishes reference works.") and publishers like them ("An academic publisher is a good source of reference works").
All four can affect reliability.
Base articles on reliable, independent, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. Source material must have been published, the definition of which for the purposes of Wikipedia is made available to the public in some form. Unpublished materials are not considered reliable. Use sources that directly support the material presented in an article and are appropriate to the claims made. The appropriateness of any source depends on the context. Be especially careful when sourcing content related to living people or medicine.
If available, academic and peer-reviewed publications are usually the most reliable sources on topics such as history, medicine, and science.
Editors may also use material from reliable non-academic sources, particularly if it appears in respected mainstream publications. Other reliable sources include:
University-level textbooks
Books published by respected publishing houses
Mainstream (non-fringe) magazines, including specialty ones
Reputable newspapers
Editors may also use electronic media, subject to the same criteria (see details in Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources and Wikipedia:Search engine test).
Best sources: The best sources have a professional structure for checking or analyzing facts, legal issues, evidence, and arguments. The greater the degree of scrutiny given to these issues, the more reliable the source.
Newspaper and magazine blogs: Some newspapers, magazines, and other news organizations host online pages, columns or rolling text they call blogs. These may be acceptable sources if the writers are professionals, but use them with caution because blogs may not be subject to the news organization's normal fact-checking process. If a news organization publishes an opinion piece in a blog, attribute the statement to the writer, e.g. "Jane Smith wrote ..." Never use the blog comments that are left by the readers as sources. For personal or group blogs that are not reliable sources, see § Self-published sources below.
Reliable sources noticeboard and guideline: To discuss the reliability of a specific source for a particular statement, consult Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard, which seeks to apply this policy to particular cases. For a guideline discussing the reliability of particular types of sources, see Wikipedia:Reliable sources. In the case of inconsistency between this policy and the Wikipedia:Reliable sources guideline, or any other guideline related to sourcing, this policy has priority.
Sources that are usually not reliable:
Questionable sources: Questionable sources are those that have a poor reputation for checking the facts, lack meaningful editorial oversight, or have an apparent conflict of interest.
Such sources include websites and publications expressing views widely considered by other sources to be promotional, extremist, or relying heavily on unsubstantiated gossip, rumor, or personal opinion. Questionable sources should be used only as sources for material on themselves, such as in articles about themselves; see below. They are not suitable sources for contentious claims about others.
Predatory open access journals are considered questionable due to the absence of quality control in the peer-review process.
Self-published sources: Anyone can create a personal web page, self-publish a book, or claim to be an expert. That is why self-published material such as books, patents, newsletters, personal websites, open wikis, personal or group blogs (as distinguished from newsblogs, above), content farms, Internet forum postings, and social media postings are largely not acceptable as sources. Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established subject-matter expert, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications. Exercise caution when using such sources: if the information in question is suitable for inclusion, someone else will probably have published it in independent, reliable sources. Never use self-published sources as third-party sources about living people, even if the author is an expert, well-known professional researcher, or writer.
Self-published or questionable sources as sources on themselves: Self-published and questionable sources may be used as sources of information about themselves, usually in articles about themselves or their activities, without the self-published source requirement that they are established experts in the field, so long as:
The material is neither unduly self-serving nor an exceptional claim;
It does not involve claims about third parties;
It does not involve claims about events not directly related to the source;
There is no reasonable doubt as to its authenticity; and
The article is not based primarily on such sources.
This policy also applies to material made public by the source on social networking websites such as Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Reddit, and Facebook.
Wikipedia and sources that mirror or use it: Do not use articles from Wikipedia (whether English Wikipedia or Wikipedias in other languages) as sources, since Wikipedia is a user-generated source. Also, do not use websites mirroring Wikipedia content or publications relying on material from Wikipedia as sources. Content from a Wikipedia article is not considered reliable unless it is backed up by citing reliable sources. Confirm that these sources support the content, then use them directly.
An exception is allowed when Wikipedia itself is being discussed in the article. These may cite an article, guideline, discussion, statistic, or other content from Wikipedia (or a sister project) to support a statement about Wikipedia. Wikipedia or the sister project is a primary source in this case and may be used following the policy for primary sources. Any such use should avoid original research, undue emphasis on Wikipedia's role or views, and inappropriate self-reference. The article text should clarify how the material is sourced from Wikipedia to inform the reader about the potential bias.
Accessibility:
Access to sources: Do not reject reliable sources just because they are difficult or costly to access. Some reliable sources are not easily accessible. For example, an online source may require payment, and a print-only source may be available only through libraries. Rare historical sources may even be available only in special museum collections and archives. If you have trouble accessing a source, others may be able to do so on your behalf (see WikiProject Resource Exchange).
Non-English sources:
Citing: Citations to non-English reliable sources are allowed on the English Wikipedia. However, because this project is in English, English-language sources are preferred over non-English ones when they are available and of equal quality and relevance. As with sources in English, if a dispute arises involving a citation to a non-English source, editors may request a quotation of relevant portions of the original source be provided, either in text, in a footnote, or on the article talk page. (See Template:Request quotation.)
Quoting: If you quote a non-English reliable source (whether in the main text or in a footnote), a translation into English should accompany the quote. Translations published by reliable sources are preferred over translations by Wikipedians, but translations by Wikipedians are preferred over machine translations. |
mil_tactics_continued_pretraining.csv | Wikipedia:Verifiability | Non-English sources:
Citing: Citations to non-English reliable sources are allowed on the English Wikipedia. However, because this project is in English, English-language sources are preferred over non-English ones when they are available and of equal quality and relevance. As with sources in English, if a dispute arises involving a citation to a non-English source, editors may request a quotation of relevant portions of the original source be provided, either in text, in a footnote, or on the article talk page. (See Template:Request quotation.)
Quoting: If you quote a non-English reliable source (whether in the main text or in a footnote), a translation into English should accompany the quote. Translations published by reliable sources are preferred over translations by Wikipedians, but translations by Wikipedians are preferred over machine translations. When using a machine translation of source material, editors should be reasonably certain that the translation is accurate and the source is appropriate. Editors should not rely upon machine translations of non-English sources in contentious articles or biographies of living people. If needed, ask an editor who can translate it for you.
The original text is usually included with the translated text in articles when translated by Wikipedians, and the translating editor is usually not cited. When quoting any material, whether in English or in some other language, be careful not to violate copyright; see the fair-use guideline.
Other issues:
Verifiability does not guarantee inclusion: While information must be verifiable for inclusion in an article, not all verifiable information must be included. Consensus may determine that certain information does not improve an article. Such information should be omitted or presented instead in a different article. The responsibility for achieving consensus for inclusion is on those seeking to include disputed content.
Tagging a sentence, section, or article: If you want to request an inline citation for an unsourced statement, you can tag a sentence with the {{citation needed}} template by writing {{cn}} or {{fact}}. Other templates exist for tagging sections or entire articles here. You can also leave a note on the talk page asking for a source, or move the material to the talk page and ask for a source there. To request verification that a reference supports the text, tag it with {{verification needed}}. Material that fails verification may be tagged with {{failed verification}} or removed. It helps other editors to explain your rationale for using templates to tag material in the template, edit summary, or on the talk page.
Take special care with contentious material about living and recently deceased people. Unsourced or poorly sourced material that is contentious, especially text that is negative, derogatory, or potentially damaging, should be removed immediately rather than tagged or moved to the talk page.
Exceptional claims require exceptional sourcing: Any exceptional claim requires multiple high-quality sources. Warnings (red flags) that should prompt extra caution include:
Surprising or apparently important claims not covered by multiple mainstream sources;
Challenged claims that are supported purely by primary or self-published sources or those with an apparent conflict of interest;
Reports of a statement by someone that seems out of character or against an interest they had previously defended;
Claims contradicted by the prevailing view within the relevant community or that would significantly alter mainstream assumptions—especially in science, medicine, history, politics, and biographies of living and recently dead people. This is especially true when proponents say there is a conspiracy to silence them.
Verifiability and other principles:
Copyright and plagiarism: Do not plagiarize or breach copyright when using sources. Summarize source material in your own words as much as possible; when quoting or closely paraphrasing a source, use an inline citation, and in-text attribution where appropriate.
Do not link to any source that violates the copyrights of others per contributors' rights and obligations. You can link to websites that display copyrighted works as long as the website has licensed the work or uses the work in a way compliant with fair use. Knowingly directing others to material that violates copyright may be considered contributory copyright infringement. If there is reason to think a source violates copyright, do not cite it. This is particularly relevant when linking to sites such as Scribd or YouTube, where due care should be taken to avoid linking to material violating copyright.
Neutrality: Even when information is cited to reliable sources, you must present it with a neutral point of view (NPOV). Articles should be based on thorough research of sources. All articles must adhere to NPOV, fairly representing all majority and significant-minority viewpoints published by reliable sources, in rough proportion to the prominence of each view. Tiny-minority views need not be included, except in articles devoted to them. If there is a disagreement between sources, use in-text attribution: "John Smith argues X, while Paul Jones maintains Y," followed by an inline citation. Sources themselves do not need to maintain a neutral point of view. Indeed, many reliable sources are not neutral. Our job as editors is simply to summarize what reliable sources say.
Notability: If no reliable, independent sources can be found on a topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it (i.e., the topic is not notable).
However, notability is based on the existence of suitable sources, not on the state of sourcing in an article (WP:NEXIST).
Original research: The no original research policy (NOR) is closely related to the Verifiability policy. Among its requirements are:
All material in Wikipedia articles must be attributable to a reliable published source. This means a reliable published source must exist for it, whether or not it is cited in the article.
Sources must support the material clearly and directly: drawing inferences from multiple sources to advance a novel position is prohibited by the NOR policy.
Base articles largely on reliable secondary sources. While primary sources are appropriate in some cases, relying on them can be problematic. For more information, see the Primary, secondary, and tertiary sources section of the NOR policy, and the Misuse of primary sources section of the BLP policy.
See also:
Guidelines: Reliable sources
Identifying reliable sources (medicine)
Citing sources
Information pages:
Resources: Backlog – links to articles that need citations added
Template index/Sources of articles – maintenance templates for articles with sourcing problems
The Wikipedia Library – free access to newspapers, journals, and magazines for experienced editors
WikiProject Resource Exchange – where you can ask for help with checking an individual source
Essays:
Notes:
References:
Further reading: Wales, Jimmy. "Insist on sources", WikiEN-l, July 19, 2006: "I really want to encourage a much stronger culture which says: it is better to have no information, than to have information like this, with no sources."—referring to a rather unlikely statement about the founders of Google throwing pies at each other. |
mil_tactics_continued_pretraining.csv | Winter War | Background:
Finnish-Soviet relations and politics: Until the early 19th century, Finland was the eastern part of the Kingdom of Sweden. From 21 February 1808 to 17 September 1809, the Russian Empire waged the Finnish War against the Kingdom of Sweden, ostensibly to protect the Russian capital, Saint Petersburg. Eventually Russia conquered and annexed Finland, and converted it into an autonomous buffer state. The resulting Grand Duchy of Finland enjoyed wide autonomy within Russia until the end of the 19th century, when Russia began attempts to assimilate Finland as part of a general policy to strengthen the central government and unify the Empire by Russification. Those attempts were aborted because of Russia's internal strife, but they ruined Russia's relationship with Finland. In addition, support increased in Finland for self-determination movements.
World War I led to the collapse of the Russian Empire during the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Russian Civil War. On 15 November 1917, the Bolshevik Russian government declared that national minorities possessed the right of self-determination, including the right to secede and form a separate state, which gave Finland a window of opportunity. On 6 December 1917, the Senate of Finland declared the nation's independence. Soviet Russia, later the Soviet Union, recognised the new Finnish government just three weeks after the declaration. Finland achieved full sovereignty in May 1918 after a four-month civil war in which the conservative Whites defeated the socialist Reds with the help of the Imperial German Army, pro-German Jägers, and some Swedish troops, in addition to the expulsion of Bolshevik troops.
Finland joined the League of Nations in 1920 and sought security guarantees, but Finland's primary goal was co-operation with the Scandinavian countries, mainly Sweden, and it focused on the exchange of information and on defence planning (the joint defence of Åland, for example), rather than on military exercises or on the stockpiling and the deployment of materiel. Nevertheless, Sweden carefully avoided committing itself to Finnish foreign policy. Finland's military policy included clandestine defence co-operation with Estonia.
The period after the Finnish Civil War to the early 1930s was a politically unstable time in Finland because of the continued rivalry between the conservatives and the socialists. The Communist Party of Finland was declared illegal in 1931, and the nationalist Lapua Movement organised anticommunist violence, which culminated in a failed coup attempt in 1932. The successor of the Lapua Movement, the Patriotic People's Movement, had a minor presence in national politics and never had more than 14 seats of the 200 in the Finnish Parliament. By the late 1930s, the export-oriented Finnish economy was growing and the nation's extreme political movements had diminished.
After Soviet involvement in the Finnish Civil War in 1918, no formal peace treaty was signed. In 1918 and 1919, Finnish volunteers conducted two unsuccessful military incursions across the Soviet border, the Viena and Aunus expeditions, to annex areas in Karelia that according to the Greater Finland ideology would combine all Baltic Finnic peoples into a single state. In 1920, Finnish communists based in Soviet Russia attempted to assassinate the former Finnish White Guard Commander-in-Chief, Marshal Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim. On 14 October 1920, Finland and Soviet Russia signed the Treaty of Tartu, confirming the old border between the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland and Imperial Russia proper as the new Finnish–Soviet border. Finland also received Petsamo Province, with its ice-free harbour on the Arctic Ocean. Despite the signing of the treaty, relations between the two countries remained strained. The Finnish government allowed volunteers to cross the border to support the East Karelian uprising in Russia in 1921, and Finnish communists in the Soviet Union continued to prepare for revenge and staged a cross-border raid into Finland, the Pork Mutiny, in 1922. In 1932, the Soviet–Finnish Non-Aggression Pact was signed between both countries, and it was reaffirmed for ten years in 1934. Foreign trade in Finland was booming, but less than 1% of it was with the Soviet Union. In 1934, the Soviet Union also joined the League of Nations.
Justification: Soviet General Secretary Joseph Stalin regarded it a disappointment that the Soviet Union could not halt the Finnish Revolution. He thought that the pro-Finland movement in Karelia posed a direct threat to Leningrad and that the area and defences of Finland could be used to invade the Soviet Union or restrict fleet movements. Soviet propaganda then painted Finland's leadership as a "vicious and reactionary fascist clique". Field Marshal Mannerheim and Väinö Tanner, the leader of the Finnish Social Democratic Party, were targeted for particular scorn. When Stalin gained absolute power through the Great Purge of 1938, the Soviets changed their foreign policy toward Finland and began to pursue the reconquest of the provinces of Tsarist Russia that had been lost during the chaos of the October Revolution of 1917 and the Russian Civil War almost two decades earlier. Soviet leaders believed that the old empire's extended borders provided territorial security and wanted Leningrad, only 32 km (20 mi) from the Finnish border, to enjoy a similar level of security against the rising power of Nazi Germany.
Negotiations: In April 1938, NKVD agent Boris Yartsev contacted Finnish Foreign Minister Rudolf Holsti and Finnish Prime Minister Aimo Cajander, stating that the Soviets did not trust Germany and that war was considered possible between the two countries. The Red Army would not wait passively behind the border but would rather "advance to meet the enemy". Finnish representatives assured Yartsev that Finland was committed to a policy of neutrality and that the country would resist any armed incursion. Yartsev suggested that Finland cede or lease some islands in the Gulf of Finland along the seaward approaches to Leningrad, but Finland refused.
Negotiations continued throughout 1938 without results. The Finnish reception of Soviet entreaties was decidedly cool, as the violent collectivisation and purges in Stalin's Soviet Union resulted in a poor opinion of the country. Most of the Finnish communist elite in the Soviet Union had been executed during the Great Purge, further tarnishing the Soviets' image in Finland. Meanwhile, Finland was attempting to negotiate a military co-operation plan with Sweden and hoping to jointly defend Åland.
The Soviet Union and Nazi Germany signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact in August 1939. It was publicly a non-aggression treaty, but it included a secret protocol in which Central and Eastern European countries were divided into spheres of influence. Finland fell into the Soviet sphere. On 1 September 1939, Germany began its invasion of Poland, and two days later, the United Kingdom and France declared war on Germany. On 17 September, the Soviet invasion of Poland began. After the fall of Poland, Germany and the Soviet Union exchanged occupied Polish lands to establish a new border in accordance with the provisions of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were soon forced to accept treaties that allowed the Soviets to establish military bases on their soil. Estonia accepted the ultimatum by signing the agreement on 28 September. Latvia and Lithuania followed in October. Unlike the three Baltic countries, Finland started a gradual mobilisation under the guise of "additional refresher training". The Soviets had already started intensive mobilisation near the Finnish border in 1938–39. Assault troops thought to be necessary for the invasion did not begin deployment until October 1939. Operational plans made in September called for the invasion to start in November.
On 5 October 1939, the Soviets invited a Finnish delegation to Moscow for negotiations. Juho Kusti Paasikivi, the Finnish envoy to Sweden, was sent to Moscow to represent the Finnish government Furthermore, the negotiations were attended by Stalin in person, signalling the seriousness of the effort. Paasikivi would later recount his surprise over the friendly atmosphere in which the delegation was received, and mentioned the pleasant manners of Stalin towards them.
The meetings began on 12 October, with Molotov's offer of a mutual assistance pact, which the Finns immediately refused. To the Finns' surprise, Molotov dropped the offer and instead proposed an exchange of territory. The offer stipulated that the Finnish-Soviet border on the Karelian Isthmus be moved westward to a point only 30 km (19 mi) east of Viipuri (Russian: Vyborg) and that Finland destroy all existing fortifications on the Karelian Isthmus. Likewise, the delegation demanded the cession of islands in the Gulf of Finland as well as Rybachy Peninsula (Finnish: Kalastajasaarento). The Finns would also have to lease the Hanko Peninsula for 30 years and to permit the Soviets to establish a military base there. In exchange, the Soviet Union would cede Repola and Porajärvi from Eastern Karelia (2120 square miles), an area twice the size as that of the territory demanded from Finland (1000 square miles).
The Soviet offer divided the Finnish government: Gustaf Mannerheim had argued for an agreement, being pessimistic of the Finnish prospects in a war against the Soviet Union. |
mil_tactics_continued_pretraining.csv | Winter War | Likewise, the delegation demanded the cession of islands in the Gulf of Finland as well as Rybachy Peninsula (Finnish: Kalastajasaarento). The Finns would also have to lease the Hanko Peninsula for 30 years and to permit the Soviets to establish a military base there. In exchange, the Soviet Union would cede Repola and Porajärvi from Eastern Karelia (2120 square miles), an area twice the size as that of the territory demanded from Finland (1000 square miles).
The Soviet offer divided the Finnish government: Gustaf Mannerheim had argued for an agreement, being pessimistic of the Finnish prospects in a war against the Soviet Union. But the Finnish government was reticent in reaching an agreement out of mistrust for Stalin: there was a fear of repeated follow-up demands, which would have put the future of Finnish sovereignty in danger. There were also those, such as Foreign Minister Eljas Erkko and Prime Minister Aimo Cajander, and the Finnish intelligence in general, who mistook the demands and the Soviet military build-up as a mere bluff on the part of Stalin, and were thus disinclined to reach an agreement.
The Finns made two counteroffers to cede the Terijoki area to the Soviet Union. That would double the distance between Leningrad and the Finnish border but was far less than the Soviets had demanded. The Finns would also cede the islands in the Gulf of Finland, but they would not agree to lease any territory to the USSR for military purposes.
On the next meeting on 23 October, Stalin conceded to lessen his demands: a reduction in the amount of land demanded in Karelia; a reduction of the Hanko garrison from 5000 to 4000 men; and reducing the length of lease from 30 years to whatever date the ongoing (second world) war in Europe would end. However, this sudden change, contrary to previous statements that Soviet demands were minimalist and thus unalterable, had surprised the Finnish government, and lead them to believe more concession may be forthcoming. Thus, Paasikivi's idea of reaching some sort of compromise by offering the Soviets the island of Jussarö and the fort of Ino were refused by Helsinki.
On 31 October, Molotov publicly announced the Soviet demands to the Supreme Soviet. This surprised the Finns, and lent credibility to Soviet claims that their demands were minimalist and thus unalterable, as it would have been impossible to reduce them without a loss of prestige after having made them public. However, the Soviet offer was eventually rejected with respect to the opinion of the public and Parliament.
At the meeting on 9 November, Paasikivi announced to the attending Stalin and Molotov the Finnish refusal to accept even their reduced demands. The Soviets were visibly surprised. Finnish Foreign Minister Vaino Tanner later wrote that "the eyes of our opposite numbers opened wide". Stalin had asked "You don't even offer Ino?" This would become the final meeting: the Soviets stopped responding to further Finnish letters and on 13 November, when the Finnish delegation was recalled from Moscow, no Soviet officials came to see them off. The Finns had left under the expectation that the negotiations would continue. Instead, the Soviet Union ramped up its military preparations.
The negotiations had failed, as neither side was willing to substantially reduce their demands, nor was either side able to fully trust the other. The Finns were fearful of an encroachment on their sovereignty, while the Soviets were (claiming to be) fearful of a springboard for international enemies in Finland, in close proximity to Leningrad. No promises to the contrary managed to persuade the other. Additionally, both sides had misunderstood the others position: the Finns had assumed that the Soviets had opened up on a maximalist demand, ready to be traded down smaller. The Soviets instead had stressed the minimalist nature of their demands, and were incredulous over Finnish reluctance to agree. Finally, there was also Stalin's unwillingness or inability to accept that any territorial concessions on the part of Finland would have only been possible by a 4/5th majority in the Finnish parliament. He had mocked such a requirement, proposing that they count his and Molotov's votes, too.
Shelling of Mainila and Soviet intentions: On 26 November 1939, an incident was reported near the Soviet village of Mainila, near the border with Finland. A Soviet border guard post had been shelled by an unknown party resulting, according to Soviet reports, in the deaths of four and injuries of nine border guards. Research conducted by several Finnish and Russian historians later concluded that the shelling was a false flag operation since there were no artillery units there, and it was carried out from the Soviet side of the border by an NKVD unit with the purpose of providing the Soviets with a casus belli and a pretext to withdraw from the non-aggression pact. Soviet war games held in March 1938 and 1939 had been based on a scenario in which border incidents taking place at the village of Mainila would spark the war.
Molotov claimed that the incident was a Finnish artillery attack. He demanded that Finland apologise for the incident and to move its forces beyond a line 20–25 km (12–16 mi) from the border. Finland denied responsibility for the attack, rejected the demands and called for a joint Finnish–Soviet commission to examine the incident. In turn, the Soviet Union claimed that the Finnish response was hostile, renounced the non-aggression pact and severed diplomatic relations with Finland on 28 November. In the following years, Soviet historiography described the incident as Finnish provocation. Doubt on the official Soviet version was cast only in the late 1980s, during the policy of glasnost. The issue has continued to divide Russian historiography even after the end of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Soviet intentions: In 2013, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated at a meeting with military historians that the Soviets had launched the Winter War to "correct mistakes" made in determining the border with Finland after 1917. Opinion on the scale of the initial Soviet invasion decision is divided. The puppet Finnish communist government and the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact's secret protocol is used as proof that the Soviet Union had intended to conquer all of Finland.
On 1 December 1939, the Soviet Union formed a puppet government, named the Finnish Democratic Republic, to govern Finland after Soviet conquest. A declaration delivered via TASS stated:
The People's Government in its present composition regards itself as a provisional government. Immediately upon arrival in Helsinki, capital of the country, it will be reorganised and its composition enlarged by the inclusion of representatives of the various parties and groups participating in the people's front of toilers.
Soviet leaflets dropped over Helsinki on the first day of the war stated: "Finnish Comrades! We come to you not as conquerors, but as liberators of the Finnish people from the oppression of the capitalists and the landlords".
In 1939, Soviet military leadership had formulated a realistic and comprehensive plan for the occupation of Finland. However, Joseph Stalin was not pleased with the conservative pace that the operation required and demanded new plans be drawn up. With the new plans, the key deadline for Finland's capitulation was to be Stalin's 60th birthday on 21 December. Convinced of the invasion's forthcoming success, Andrei Zhdanov, chairman of the highest legislative body in the Soviet Union, commissioned a celebratory piece of music from Dmitri Shostakovich, Suite on Finnish Themes, intended to be performed as the marching bands of the Red Army paraded through Helsinki.
Hungarian historian István Ravasz wrote that the Soviet Central Committee had set out in 1939 that the former borders of the Tsarist Empire were to be restored, including Finland. American political scientist Dan Reiter stated that the Soviets "sought to impose a regime change" and thus "achieve absolute victory". He quoted Molotov, who had commented in November 1939 on the regime change plan to a Soviet ambassador that the new government "will not be Soviet, but one of a democratic republic. Nobody is going to set up Soviets over there, but we hope it will be a government we can come to terms with as to ensure the security of Leningrad". According to Russian historian Yuri Kilin, the Soviet terms encompassed the strongest fortified approaches of the Finnish defences for a reason. He claimed that Stalin had little hope for such a deal but would play for time for the ongoing mobilisation. He stated the objective as being to secure Finland from being used as a staging ground by means of regime change.
Others argue against the idea of a complete Soviet conquest. American historian William R. Trotter asserted that Stalin's objective was to secure Leningrad's flank from a possible German invasion through Finland. He stated that "the strongest argument" against a Soviet intention of full conquest is that it did not happen in either 1939 or during the Continuation War in 1944 even though Stalin "could have done so with comparative ease". Bradley Lightbody wrote that the "entire Soviet aim had been to make the Soviet border more secure". In 2002, Russian historian A. Chubaryan stated that no documents had been found in Russian archives that support a Soviet plan to annex Finland. Rather, the objective was to gain Finnish territory and to reinforce Soviet influence in the region. |
mil_tactics_continued_pretraining.csv | Winter War | He stated the objective as being to secure Finland from being used as a staging ground by means of regime change.
Others argue against the idea of a complete Soviet conquest. American historian William R. Trotter asserted that Stalin's objective was to secure Leningrad's flank from a possible German invasion through Finland. He stated that "the strongest argument" against a Soviet intention of full conquest is that it did not happen in either 1939 or during the Continuation War in 1944 even though Stalin "could have done so with comparative ease". Bradley Lightbody wrote that the "entire Soviet aim had been to make the Soviet border more secure". In 2002, Russian historian A. Chubaryan stated that no documents had been found in Russian archives that support a Soviet plan to annex Finland. Rather, the objective was to gain Finnish territory and to reinforce Soviet influence in the region.
Another American historian Stephen Kotkin also shares the position that the Soviet Union did not aim for annexation. He points out the different treatment Finland was given, compared to the Baltics: unlike the pacts of mutual assistance that the Baltics were pressured into, resulting in their total Sovietization, the Soviets demanded limited territorial concessions from Finland, and even offered land in return, which would not have made sense if full Sovietization was intended. And according to Kotkin, Stalin seemed to be genuinely interested in reaching an agreement during the negotiations: he had personally attended six of the seven meetings with the Finns, and had multiple times reduced his demands. However, mutual mistrust and misunderstandings would mar the negotiations, producing an impasse.
Opposing forces:
Soviet military plan: Before the war, Soviet leadership had expected total victory within a few weeks. The Red Army had just completed the invasion of eastern Poland at a cost of fewer than 4,000 casualties after Germany attacked Poland from the west. Stalin's expectations of a quick Soviet triumph were backed up by politician Andrei Zhdanov and military strategist Kliment Voroshilov, but other generals were more reserved. Red Army Chief of Staff Boris Shaposhnikov advocated a narrow-front assault right on the Karelian isthmus. Additionally, Shaposhnikov argued for a fuller build-up, extensive fire support and logistical preparations, a rational order of battle and the deployment of the army's best units. Zhdanov's military commander, Kirill Meretskov, reported, "The terrain of coming operations is split by lakes, rivers, swamps, and is almost entirely covered by forests.... The proper use of our forces will be difficult". These doubts were not reflected in Meretskov's troop deployments, and he publicly announced that the Finnish campaign would take two weeks at most. Soviet soldiers had even been warned not to cross the border mistakenly into Sweden.
Stalin's purges in the 1930s had devastated the officer corps of the Red Army; those purged included three of its five marshals, 220 of its 264 division or higher-level commanders and 36,761 officers of all ranks. Fewer than half of all the officers remained. They were commonly replaced by soldiers who were less competent but more loyal to their superiors. Unit commanders were overseen by political commissars, whose approval was needed to approve and ratify military decisions, which they evaluated based on their political merits. The dual system further complicated the Soviet chain of command and annulled the independence of commanding officers.
After the Soviet success at the Battles of Khalkhin Gol against Japan, on the USSR's eastern border, Soviet High Command had divided into two factions. One side was represented by the Spanish Civil War veterans General Pavel Rychagov from the Soviet Air Forces; the tank expert General Dmitry Pavlov and Stalin's favourite general, Marshal Grigory Kulik, the chief of artillery. The other faction was led by Khalkhin Gol veterans General Georgy Zhukov of the Red Army and General Grigory Kravchenko of the Soviet Air Forces. Under this divided command structure, the lessons of the Soviet Union's "first real war on a massive scale using tanks, artillery, and aircraft" at Khalkin Gol went unheeded. As a result, Russian BT tanks were less successful during the Winter War, and it took the Soviet Union three months and over a million men to accomplish what Zhukov had managed at Khalkhin Gol in ten days (albeit in completely different circumstances).
Soviet order of battle: Soviet generals were impressed by the success of German Blitzkrieg tactics, but they had been tailored to conditions in Central Europe, with its dense well-mapped network of paved roads. Armies fighting there had recognised supply and communications centres, which could be easily targeted by armoured vehicle regiments. Finnish Army centres, in contrast, were deep inside the country. There were no paved roads, and even gravel or dirt roads were scarce. Most of the terrain consisted of trackless forests and swamps. The war correspondent John Langdon-Davies observed the landscape: "Every acre of its surface was created to be the despair of an attacking military force". Waging Blitzkrieg in Finland was a highly-difficult proposition, and according to Trotter, the Red Army failed to meet the level of tactical co-ordination and local initiative that would be required to execute such tactics in Finland.
Commander of the Leningrad Military District Kiril Meretskov initially ran the overall operation against the Finns. The command was passed on 9 December 1939 to the General Staff Supreme Command (later known as Stavka), directly under Kliment Voroshilov (chairman), Nikolai Kuznetsov, Stalin and Boris Shaposhnikov. On 28 December, when Stalin asked for volunteers to take over military command, Semyon Timoshenko offered himself on the condition that he be allowed to implement Shaposhnikov's initial plan of a focused attack on the Karelian Isthmus to break the Mannerhiem Line; it was accepted. In January 1940, the Leningrad Military District was reformed and renamed "North-Western Front".
The Soviet forces were organised as follows:
The 7th Army, comprising nine divisions, a tank corps and three tank brigades, was located on the Karelian Isthmus. Its objective was to quickly overrun the Finnish defenses on the Karelian Isthmus and conquer Viipuri. From there, the 7th Army was to continue towards Lappeenranta, then turn west towards Lahti, before the final push to the capital Helsinki. The force was later divided into the 7th and 13th Armies.
The 8th Army, comprising six divisions and a tank brigade, was north of Lake Ladoga. Its mission was to execute a flanking manoeuvre around the northern shore of Lake Ladoga to strike at the rear of the Mannerheim Line.
The 9th Army was positioned to strike into Central Finland through the Kainuu region. It was composed of three divisions with one more on its way. Its mission was to thrust westward to cut Finland in half.
The 14th Army, comprising three divisions, was based in Murmansk. Its objectives were to capture the Arctic port of Petsamo and then advance to the town of Rovaniemi.
Finnish order of battle: The Finnish strategy was dictated by geography. The 1,340 km (830 mi) border with the Soviet Union was mostly impassable except along a handful of unpaved roads. In prewar calculations, the Finnish Defence Command, which had established its wartime headquarters at Mikkeli, had estimated seven Soviet divisions on the Karelian Isthmus and no more than five along the whole border north of Lake Ladoga. In the estimation, the manpower ratio would have favoured the attacker by three to one. The true ratio was much higher, however, since for example, 12 Soviet divisions were deployed north of Lake Ladoga.
Finland had a large force of reservists, which was trained in regular maneuvers, some of which had experience from the recent Finnish Civil War. The soldiers were also almost universally trained in basic survival techniques, such as skiing. The Finnish Army was not able to equip all its soldiers with proper uniforms at the outbreak of war, but its reservists were equipped with warm civilian clothing. However, the sparsely-populated highly-agrarian Finland had to draft so many of its working men that the Finnish economy was massively strained because of a lack of workers. An even greater problem than lack of soldiers was the lack of materiel since foreign shipments of anti-tank weapons and aircraft were arriving only in small quantities. The ammunition situation was alarming, as stockpiles had cartridges, shells and fuel to last only 19 to 60 days. The ammunition shortage meant the Finns could seldom afford counter-battery or saturation fire. Finnish tank forces were operationally nonexistent. The ammunition situation was alleviated somewhat since Finns were largely armed with Mosin–Nagant rifles dating from the Finnish Civil War, which used the same 7.62×54mmR cartridge that was used by Soviet forces. The situation was so severe that Finnish soldiers sometimes had to maintain their ammunition supply by looting the bodies of dead Soviet soldiers.
The Finnish forces were positioned as follows:
The Army of the Isthmus was composed of six divisions under the command of Hugo Österman. The II Army Corps was positioned on its right flank and the III Army Corps, on its left flank.
The IV Army Corps was located north of Lake Ladoga. |
mil_tactics_continued_pretraining.csv | Winter War | The ammunition situation was alarming, as stockpiles had cartridges, shells and fuel to last only 19 to 60 days. The ammunition shortage meant the Finns could seldom afford counter-battery or saturation fire. Finnish tank forces were operationally nonexistent. The ammunition situation was alleviated somewhat since Finns were largely armed with Mosin–Nagant rifles dating from the Finnish Civil War, which used the same 7.62×54mmR cartridge that was used by Soviet forces. The situation was so severe that Finnish soldiers sometimes had to maintain their ammunition supply by looting the bodies of dead Soviet soldiers.
The Finnish forces were positioned as follows:
The Army of the Isthmus was composed of six divisions under the command of Hugo Österman. The II Army Corps was positioned on its right flank and the III Army Corps, on its left flank.
The IV Army Corps was located north of Lake Ladoga. It was composed of two divisions under Juho Heiskanen, who was soon replaced by Woldemar Hägglund.
The North Finland Group was a collection of White Guards, border guards and drafted reservist units under Wiljo Tuompo.
Soviet invasion:
Start of invasion and political operations: On 30 November 1939, Soviet forces invaded Finland with 21 divisions, totalling 450,000 men, and bombed Helsinki, killing about 100 citizens and destroying more than 50 buildings. In response to international criticism, Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov stated that the Soviet Air Force was not bombing Finnish cities but rather dropping humanitarian aid to the starving Finnish population; the bombs were sarcastically dubbed Molotov bread baskets by Finns. The Finnish statesman J. K. Paasikivi commented that the Soviet attack without a declaration of war violated three separate non-aggression pacts: the Treaty of Tartu, which was signed in 1920, the non-aggression pact between Finland and the Soviet Union, which was signed in 1932 and again in 1934; and also the Covenant of the League of Nations, which the Soviet Union signed in 1934. Field Marshal C.G.E. Mannerheim was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Finnish Defence Forces after the Soviet attack. In a further reshuffling, Aimo Cajander's caretaker cabinet was replaced by Risto Ryti and his cabinet, with Väinö Tanner as foreign minister because of opposition to Cajander's prewar politics. Finland brought the matter of the Soviet invasion before the League of Nations. The League expelled the Soviet Union on 14 December 1939 and exhorted its members to aid Finland.
Headed by Otto Wille Kuusinen, the Finnish Democratic Republic puppet government operated in the parts of Finnish Karelia occupied by the Soviets, and was also referred to as the "Terijoki Government", after the village of Terijoki, the first settlement captured by the advancing Red Army. After the war, the puppet government was reabsorbed into the Soviet Union. From the very outset of the war, working-class Finns stood behind the legitimate government in Helsinki. Finnish national unity against the Soviet invasion was later called the spirit of the Winter War.
First battles and Soviet advance to Mannerheim Line: The array of Finnish defence structures that during the war started to be called the Mannerheim Line was located on the Karelian Isthmus approximately 30 to 75 km (19 to 47 mi) from the Soviet border. The Red Army soldiers on the Isthmus numbered 250,000, facing 130,000 Finns. The Finnish command deployed a defence in depth of about 21,000 men in the area in front of the Mannerheim Line to delay and damage the Red Army before it reached the line. In combat, the most severe cause of confusion among Finnish soldiers was Soviet tanks. The Finns had few anti-tank weapons and insufficient training in modern anti-tank tactics. According to Trotter, the favoured Soviet armoured tactic was a simple frontal charge, the weaknesses of which could be exploited. The Finns learned that at close range, tanks could be dealt with in many ways; for example, logs and crowbars jammed into the bogie wheels would often immobilise a tank. Soon, Finns fielded a better ad hoc weapon, the Molotov cocktail, a glass bottle filled with flammable liquids and with a simple hand-lit fuse. Molotov cocktails were eventually mass-produced by the Finnish Alko alcoholic-beverage corporation and bundled with matches with which to light them. 80 Soviet tanks were destroyed in the border zone engagements.
By 6 December, all of the Finnish covering forces had withdrawn to the Mannerheim Line. The Red Army began its first major attack against the Line in Taipale – the area between the shore of Lake Ladoga, the Taipale river and the Suvanto waterway. Along the Suvanto sector, the Finns had a slight advantage of elevation and dry ground to dig into. The Finnish artillery had scouted the area and made fire plans in advance, anticipating a Soviet assault. The Battle of Taipale began with a forty-hour Soviet artillery preparation. After the barrage, Soviet infantry attacked across open ground but was repulsed with heavy casualties. From 6 to 12 December, the Red Army continued to try to engage using only a single division. Next, the Red Army strengthened its artillery and deployed tanks and the 150th Rifle Division forward to the Taipale front. On 14 December, the bolstered Soviet forces launched a new attack but were pushed back again. A third Soviet division entered the fight but performed poorly and panicked under shell fire. The assaults continued without success, and the Red Army suffered heavy losses. One typical Soviet attack during the battle lasted just an hour but left 1,000 dead and 27 tanks strewn on the ice. North of Lake Ladoga on the Ladoga Karelia front, the defending Finnish units relied on the terrain. Ladoga Karelia, a large forest wilderness, did not have road networks for the modern Red Army. The Soviet 8th Army had extended a new railroad line to the border, which could double the supply capability on the front. On 12 December, the advancing Soviet 139th Rifle Division, supported by the 56th Rifle Division, was defeated by a much smaller Finnish force under Paavo Talvela in Tolvajärvi, the first Finnish victory of the war.
In Central and Northern Finland, roads were few and the terrain hostile. The Finns did not expect large-scale Soviet attacks, but the Soviets sent eight divisions, heavily supported by armour and artillery. The 155th Rifle Division attacked at Lieksa, and further north the 44th attacked at Kuhmo. The 163rd Rifle Division was deployed at Suomussalmi and ordered to cut Finland in half by advancing on the Raate road. In Finnish Lapland, the Soviet 88th and 122nd Rifle Divisions attacked at Salla. The Arctic port of Petsamo was attacked by the 104th Mountain Rifle Division by sea and land, supported by naval gunfire.
Operations from December to January:
Weather conditions: The winter of 1939–40 was exceptionally cold with the Karelian Isthmus experiencing a record low temperature of −43 °C (−45 °F) on 16 January 1940. At the beginning of the war, only those Finnish soldiers who were in active service had uniforms and weapons. The rest had to make do with their own clothing, which for many soldiers was their normal winter clothing with a semblance of insignia added. Finnish soldiers were skilled in cross-country skiing. The cold, snow, forest, and long hours of darkness were factors that the Finns could use to their advantage. The Finns dressed in layers, and the ski troopers wore a lightweight white snow cape. This snow-camouflage made the ski troopers almost invisible so that they could more easily execute guerrilla attacks against Soviet columns. At the beginning of the war, Soviet tanks were painted in standard olive drab and men dressed in regular khaki uniforms. Not until late January 1940 did the Soviets paint their equipment white and issue snowsuits to their infantry.
Most Soviet soldiers had proper winter clothes, but this was not the case with every unit. In the Battle of Suomussalmi, thousands of Soviet soldiers died of frostbite. The Soviet troops also lacked skill in skiing, so soldiers were restricted to movement by road and were forced to move in long columns. The Red Army lacked proper winter tents, and troops had to sleep in improvised shelters. Some Soviet units incurred frostbite casualties as high as ten per cent even before crossing the Finnish border. However, the cold weather did give an advantage to Soviet tanks, as they could move over frozen terrain and bodies of water, rather than being immobilised in swamps and mud. According to Krivosheev, at least 61,506 Soviet troops were sick or frostbitten during the war.
Finnish guerrilla tactics: In battles from Ladoga Karelia to the Arctic port of Petsamo, the Finns used guerrilla tactics. The Red Army was superior in numbers and material, but Finns used the advantages of speed, manoeuvre warfare and economy of force. Particularly on the Ladoga Karelia front and during the Battle of Raate Road, the Finns isolated smaller portions of numerically superior Soviet forces. |
mil_tactics_continued_pretraining.csv | Winter War | The Red Army lacked proper winter tents, and troops had to sleep in improvised shelters. Some Soviet units incurred frostbite casualties as high as ten per cent even before crossing the Finnish border. However, the cold weather did give an advantage to Soviet tanks, as they could move over frozen terrain and bodies of water, rather than being immobilised in swamps and mud. According to Krivosheev, at least 61,506 Soviet troops were sick or frostbitten during the war.
Finnish guerrilla tactics: In battles from Ladoga Karelia to the Arctic port of Petsamo, the Finns used guerrilla tactics. The Red Army was superior in numbers and material, but Finns used the advantages of speed, manoeuvre warfare and economy of force. Particularly on the Ladoga Karelia front and during the Battle of Raate Road, the Finns isolated smaller portions of numerically superior Soviet forces. With Soviet forces divided into smaller groups, the Finns dealt with them individually and attacked from all sides.
For many of the encircled Soviet troops in a pocket (called a motti in Finnish, originally meaning 1 m3 (35 cu ft) of firewood), staying alive was an ordeal comparable to combat. The men were freezing and starving and endured poor sanitary conditions. Historian William R. Trotter described these conditions as follows: "The Soviet soldier had no choice. If he refused to fight, he would be shot. If he tried to sneak through the forest, he would freeze to death. And surrender was no option for him; Soviet propaganda had told him how the Finns would torture prisoners to death." The problem however was that the Finns were mostly too weak to fully exploit their success. Some of the pockets of encircled Soviet soldiers held out for weeks and even months, binding a huge number of Finnish forces.
Battles of the Mannerheim Line: The terrain on the Karelian Isthmus did not allow guerrilla tactics, so the Finns were forced to resort to the more conventional Mannerheim Line, with its flanks protected by large bodies of water. Soviet propaganda claimed that it was as strong as or even stronger than the Maginot Line. Finnish historians, for their part, have belittled the line's strength, insisting that it was mostly conventional trenches and log-covered dugouts. The Finns had built 221 strong-points along the Karelian Isthmus, mostly in the early 1920s. Many were extended in the late 1930s. Despite these defensive preparations, even the most fortified section of the Mannerheim Line had only one reinforced-concrete bunker per kilometre. Overall, the line was weaker than similar lines in mainland Europe. According to the Finns, the real strength of the line was the "stubborn defenders with a lot of sisu" – a Finnish idiom roughly translated as "guts, fighting spirit".
On the eastern side of the Isthmus, the Red Army attempted to break through the Mannerheim Line at the battle of Taipale. On the western side, Soviet units faced the Finnish line at Summa, near the city of Viipuri, on 16 December. The Finns had built 41 reinforced-concrete bunkers in the Summa area, making the defensive line in this area stronger than anywhere else on the Karelian Isthmus. Because of a mistake in planning, the nearby Munasuo swamp had a 1-kilometre (0.62 mi)-wide gap in the line. During the First Battle of Summa, a number of Soviet tanks broke through the thin line on 19 December, but the Soviets could not benefit from the situation because of insufficient co-operation between branches of service. The Finns remained in their trenches, allowing the Soviet tanks to move freely behind the Finnish line, as the Finns had no proper anti-tank weapons. The Finns succeeded in repelling the main Soviet assault. The tanks, stranded behind enemy lines, attacked the strongpoints at random until they were eventually destroyed, 20 in all. By 22 December, the battle ended in a Finnish victory.
The Soviet advance was stopped at the Mannerheim Line. Red Army troops suffered from poor morale and a shortage of supplies, eventually refusing to participate in more suicidal frontal attacks. The Finns, led by General Harald Öhquist, decided to launch a counter-attack and encircle three Soviet divisions into a motti near Viipuri on 23 December. Öhquist's plan was bold; however it failed. The Finns lost 1,300 men, and the Soviets were later estimated to have lost a similar number.
Battles in Ladoga Karelia and North Karelia: The strength of the Red Army north of Lake Ladoga in Ladoga Karelia surprised the Finnish Headquarters. Two Finnish divisions were deployed there, the 12th Division led by Lauri Tiainen and the 13th Division led by Hannu Hannuksela. They also had a support group of three brigades, bringing their total strength to over 30,000. The Soviets deployed a division for almost every road leading west to the Finnish border. The 8th Army was led by Ivan Khabarov, who was replaced by Grigory Shtern on 13 December. The Soviets' mission was to destroy the Finnish troops in the area of Ladoga Karelia and advance into the area between Sortavala and Joensuu within 10 days. The Soviets had a 3:1 advantage in manpower and a 5:1 advantage in artillery, as well as air supremacy.
Finnish forces panicked and retreated in front of the overwhelming Red Army. The commander of the Finnish IV Army Corps Juho Heiskanen was replaced by Woldemar Hägglund on 4 December. On 7 December, in the middle of the Ladoga Karelian front, Finnish units retreated near the small stream of Kollaa. The waterway itself did not offer protection, but alongside it, there were ridges up to 10 m (33 ft) high. The ensuing battle of Kollaa lasted until the end of the war. A memorable quote, "Kollaa holds" (Finnish: Kollaa kestää) became a legendary motto among Finns. Further contributing to the legend of Kollaa was the sniper Simo Häyhä, dubbed "the White Death" by Soviets, and credited with over 500 kills. Captain Aarne Juutilainen, dubbed "the Terror of Morocco", also became a living legend in the Battle of Kollaa. To the north, the Finns retreated from Ägläjärvi to Tolvajärvi on 5 December and then repelled a Soviet offensive in the battle of Tolvajärvi on 11 December.
In the south, two Soviet divisions were united on the northern side of the Lake Ladoga coastal road. As before, these divisions were trapped as the more mobile Finnish units counterattacked from the north to flank the Soviet columns. On 19 December, the Finns temporarily ceased their assaults due to exhaustion. It was not until the period of 6–16 January 1940 that the Finns resumed their offensive, dividing Soviet divisions into smaller mottis. Contrary to Finnish expectations, the encircled Soviet divisions did not try to break through to the east but instead entrenched. They were expecting reinforcements and supplies to arrive by air. As the Finns lacked the necessary heavy artillery equipment and were short of men, they often did not directly attack the mottis they had created; instead, they worked to eliminate only the most dangerous threats. Often the motti tactic was not applied as a strategy, but as a Finnish adaptation to the behaviour of Soviet troops under fire. In spite of the cold and hunger, the Soviet troops did not surrender easily but fought bravely, often entrenching their tanks to be used as pillboxes and building timber dugouts. Some specialist Finnish soldiers were called in to attack the mottis; the most famous of them was Major Matti Aarnio, or "Motti-Matti" as he became known.
In North Karelia, Soviet forces were outmanoeuvred at Ilomantsi and Lieksa. The Finns used effective guerrilla tactics, taking special advantage of their superior skiing skills and snow-white layered clothing and executing surprise ambushes and raids. By the end of December, the Soviets decided to retreat and transfer resources to more critical fronts.
Battles in Kainuu: The Suomussalmi–Raate engagement was a double operation which would later be used by military academics as a classic example of what well-led troops and innovative tactics can do against a much larger adversary. Suomussalmi was a municipality of 4,000 with long lakes, wild forests and few roads. The Finnish command believed that the Soviets would not attack there, but the Red Army committed two divisions to the Kainuu area with orders to cross the wilderness, capture the city of Oulu and effectively cut Finland in two. There were two roads leading to Suomussalmi from the frontier: the northern Juntusranta road and the southern Raate road.
The Battle of Raate Road, which occurred during the month-long Battle of Suomussalmi, resulted in one of the largest Soviet losses in the Winter War. |
mil_tactics_continued_pretraining.csv | Winter War | Battles in Kainuu: The Suomussalmi–Raate engagement was a double operation which would later be used by military academics as a classic example of what well-led troops and innovative tactics can do against a much larger adversary. Suomussalmi was a municipality of 4,000 with long lakes, wild forests and few roads. The Finnish command believed that the Soviets would not attack there, but the Red Army committed two divisions to the Kainuu area with orders to cross the wilderness, capture the city of Oulu and effectively cut Finland in two. There were two roads leading to Suomussalmi from the frontier: the northern Juntusranta road and the southern Raate road.
The Battle of Raate Road, which occurred during the month-long Battle of Suomussalmi, resulted in one of the largest Soviet losses in the Winter War. The Soviet 44th and parts of the 163rd Rifle Division, comprising about 14,000 troops, were almost completely destroyed by a Finnish ambush as they marched along the forest road. A small unit blocked the Soviet advance while Finnish Colonel Hjalmar Siilasvuo and his 9th Division cut off the retreat route, split the enemy force into smaller mottis, and then proceeded to destroy the remnants in detail as they retreated. The Soviets suffered 7,000–9,000 casualties; the Finnish units, 400. The Finnish troops captured dozens of tanks, artillery pieces, anti-tank guns, hundreds of trucks, almost 2,000 horses, thousands of rifles, and much-needed ammunition and medical supplies. So sure of their victory had the Soviets been that a military band, complete with instruments, banners and notes, was traveling with the 44th Division to perform in a victory parade. The Finns found their instruments among the captured materiel.
Battles in Finnish Lapland: The Finnish area of Lapland, bestriding the Arctic Circle, is sparsely developed, with little daylight and persistent snow-cover during winter; the Finns expected nothing more than raiding parties and reconnaissance patrols. Instead, the Soviets sent full divisions. On 11 December, the Finns rearranged the defence of Lapland and detached the Lapland Group from the North Finland Group. The group was placed under the command of Kurt Wallenius.
In southern Lapland, near the village of Salla, the Soviet 88th and 122nd Divisions, totaling 35,000 men, advanced. In the Battle of Salla, the Soviets proceeded easily to Salla, where the road split. Further ahead was Kemijärvi, while the fork to Pelkosenniemi led northwest. On 17 December, the Soviet northern group, comprising an infantry regiment, a battalion, and a company of tanks, was outflanked by a Finnish battalion. The 122nd retreated, abandoning much of its heavy equipment and vehicles. Following this success, the Finns shuttled reinforcements to the defensive line in front of Kemijärvi. The Soviets hammered the defensive line without success. The Finns counter-attacked, and the Soviets retreated to a new defensive line where they stayed for the rest of the war.
To the north was Finland's only ice-free port in the Arctic, Petsamo. The Finns lacked the manpower to defend it fully, as the main front was distant at the Karelian Isthmus. In the battle of Petsamo, the Soviet 104th Division attacked the Finnish 104th Independent Cover Company. The Finns abandoned Petsamo and concentrated on delaying actions. The area was treeless, windy, and relatively low, offering little defensible terrain. The almost constant darkness and extreme temperatures of the Lapland winter benefited the Finns, who executed guerrilla attacks against Soviet supply lines and patrols. As a result, the Soviet movements were halted by the efforts of one-fifth as many Finns.
Aerial warfare:
Soviet Air Force: The USSR enjoyed air superiority throughout the war. The Soviet Air Force, supporting the Red Army's invasion with about 2,500 aircraft (the most common type being Tupolev SB), was not as effective as the Soviets might have hoped. The material damage by the bomb raids was slight as Finland offered few valuable targets for strategic bombing. For example, the city of Tampere was one of the most important targets because it was an important railway junction, and also housed State Aircraft Factory and the Tampere Linen and Iron Industry premises, which manufactured munitions and weapons, including grenade launchers. Often, targets were village depots with little value. The country had few modern highways in the interior, therefore making the railways the main targets for bombers. Rail tracks were cut thousands of times but the Finns hastily repaired them and service resumed within a matter of hours. The Soviet Air Force learned from its early mistakes, and by late February instituted more effective tactics.
The largest bombing raid against the capital of Finland, Helsinki, occurred on the first day of the war. The capital was bombed only a few times thereafter. All in all, Soviet bombings cost Finland five per cent of its total man-hour production. Nevertheless, Soviet air attacks affected thousands of civilians, killing 957. The Soviets recorded 2,075 bombing attacks in 516 localities. The city of Viipuri, a major Soviet objective close to the Karelian Isthmus front, was almost levelled by nearly 12,000 bombs. No attacks on civilian targets were mentioned in Soviet radio or newspaper reports. In January 1940, the Soviet Pravda newspaper continued to lie that no civilian targets in Finland had been struck, even accidentally. It is estimated that the Soviet air force lost about 400 aircraft because of inclement weather, lack of fuel and tools, and during transport to the front. The Soviet Air Force flew approximately 44,000 sorties during the war.
Finnish Air Force: At the beginning of the war, Finland had a small air force, with only 114 combat planes fit for duty. Missions were limited, and fighter aircraft were mainly used to repel Soviet bombers. Strategic bombings doubled as opportunities for military reconnaissance. Old-fashioned and few in number, aircraft offered little support for Finnish ground troops. In spite of losses, the number of planes in the Finnish Air Force rose by over 50 per cent by the end of the war. The Finns received shipments of British, French, Italian, Swedish and American aircraft.
Finnish fighter pilots often flew their motley collection of planes into Soviet formations that outnumbered them 10 or even 20 times. Finnish fighters shot down 200 Soviet aircraft, while losing 62 of their own on all causes. Finnish anti-aircraft guns downed more than 300 enemy aircraft. Often, a Finnish forward air base consisted of a frozen lake, a windsock, a telephone set and some tents. Air-raid warnings were given by Finnish women organised by the Lotta Svärd. The top scoring fighter ace was Jorma Sarvanto, with 12.83 victories. He would increase his tally during the Continuation War.
Naval warfare:
Naval activity: There was little naval activity during the Winter War. The Baltic Sea began to freeze over by the end of December, impeding the movement of warships; by mid-winter, only ice breakers and submarines could still move. The other reason for low naval activity was the nature of Soviet Navy forces in the area. The Baltic Fleet was a coastal defence force which did not have the training, logistical structure, or landing craft to undertake large-scale operations. The Baltic Fleet possessed two battleships, one heavy cruiser, almost 20 destroyers, 50 motor torpedo boats, 52 submarines, and other miscellaneous vessels. The Soviets used naval bases in Paldiski, Tallinn and Liepāja for their operations.
The Finnish Navy was a coastal defence force with two coastal defence ships, five submarines, four gunboats, seven motor torpedo boats, one minelayer and six minesweepers and at least 5 icebreakers. The two coastal defence ships, Ilmarinen and Väinämöinen, were moved to harbour in Turku where they were used to bolster the air defence. Their anti-aircraft guns shot down one or two planes over the city, and the ships remained there for the rest of the war. At 18 January, Finnish armed icebreaker Tarmo was severely damaged at Kotka, received 2 bombs from a Soviet bomber with 39 Finnish troops killed in action. As well as coastal defence, the Finnish Navy protected the Ålandish and Finnish merchant vessels in the Baltic Sea.
Soviet aircraft bombed Finnish vessels and harbours and dropped mines into Finnish seaways. Still, only five merchant ships were lost to Soviet action. World War II, which had started before the Winter War, proved more costly for the Finnish merchant vessels, with 26 lost due to hostile action in 1939 and 1940.
Coastal artillery: Finnish coastal artillery batteries defended important harbours and naval bases. Most batteries were left over from the Imperial Russian period, with 152 mm (6.0 in) guns being the most numerous. Finland attempted to modernise its old guns and installed a number of new batteries, the largest of which featured a 305 mm (12.0 in) gun battery on the island of Kuivasaari in front of Helsinki, originally intended to block the Gulf of Finland to Soviet ships with the help of batteries on the Estonian side. |
mil_tactics_continued_pretraining.csv | Winter War | Soviet aircraft bombed Finnish vessels and harbours and dropped mines into Finnish seaways. Still, only five merchant ships were lost to Soviet action. World War II, which had started before the Winter War, proved more costly for the Finnish merchant vessels, with 26 lost due to hostile action in 1939 and 1940.
Coastal artillery: Finnish coastal artillery batteries defended important harbours and naval bases. Most batteries were left over from the Imperial Russian period, with 152 mm (6.0 in) guns being the most numerous. Finland attempted to modernise its old guns and installed a number of new batteries, the largest of which featured a 305 mm (12.0 in) gun battery on the island of Kuivasaari in front of Helsinki, originally intended to block the Gulf of Finland to Soviet ships with the help of batteries on the Estonian side.
The first naval battle occurred in the Gulf of Finland on 1 December, near the island of Russarö, 5 km (3.1 mi) south of Hanko. That day, the weather was fair and visibility was excellent. The Finns spotted the Soviet cruiser Kirov and two destroyers. When the ships were at a range of 24 km (13 nmi; 15 mi), the Finns opened fire with four 234 mm (9.2 in) coastal guns. After five minutes of firing by the coastal guns, the cruiser had been damaged by near misses and retreated. The destroyers remained undamaged, but the Kirov suffered 17 dead and 30 wounded. The Soviets already knew the locations of the Finnish coastal batteries, but were surprised by their range.
Coastal artillery had a greater effect on land by reinforcing defence in conjunction with army artillery. Two sets of fortress artillery made significant contributions to the early battles on the Karelian Isthmus and in Ladoga Karelia. These were located at Kaarnajoki on the Eastern Isthmus and at Mantsi on the northeastern shore of Lake Ladoga. The fortress of Koivisto provided similar support from the southwestern coast of the Isthmus.
Soviet breakthrough in February:
Red Army reforms and offensive preparations: Joseph Stalin was not pleased with the results of December 1939 in the Finnish campaign. The Red Army had been humiliated in defeats by smaller Finnish forces. By the third week of the war, Soviet propaganda was already working to explain the failures of the Soviet military to the populace: blaming bad terrain and harsh climate, and falsely claiming that the Mannerheim Line was stronger than the Maginot Line, and that the Americans had sent 1,000 of their best pilots to Finland. However, the Soviets were confronted with the unavoidable reality of the poor performance of their troops against the Finns. Stalin in particular was concerned about the effects of the war on Soviet reputation. In late December, the Soviets decided to reduce their strategic objectives and focused on bringing the war to an end.
Chief of Staff Boris Shaposhnikov was given full authority over operations in the Finnish theatre, and he ordered the suspension of frontal assaults in late December. Kliment Voroshilov was replaced with Semyon Timoshenko as the commander of the Soviet forces in the war on 7 January 1940. The main focus of the Soviet attack was switched to the Karelian Isthmus. Timoshenko and Zhdanov reorganised and tightened control between different branches of service in the Red Army. They also changed tactical doctrines to meet the realities of the situation.
The Soviet forces on the Karelian Isthmus were divided into two armies: the 7th and the 13th Army. The 7th Army, now under Kirill Meretskov, would concentrate 75 per cent of its strength against the 16 km (9.9 mi) stretch of the Mannerheim Line between Taipale and the Munasuo swamp. Tactics would be basic: an armoured wedge for the initial breakthrough, followed by the main infantry and vehicle assault force. The Red Army would prepare by pinpointing the Finnish frontline fortifications. The 123rd Rifle Division then rehearsed the assault on life-size mock-ups. The Soviets shipped large numbers of new tanks and artillery pieces to the theatre. Troops were increased from ten divisions to 25–26 divisions with six or seven tank brigades and several independent tank platoons as support, totalling 600,000 soldiers. On 1 February, the Red Army began a large offensive, firing 300,000 shells into the Finnish line in the first 24 hours of the bombardment.
Soviet offensive on the Karelian Isthmus: Although the Karelian Isthmus front was less active in January than in December, the Soviets increased bombardments, wearing down the defenders and softening their fortifications. During daylight hours, the Finns took shelter inside their fortifications from the bombardments and repaired damage during the night. The situation led quickly to war exhaustion among the Finns, who lost over 3,000 soldiers in trench warfare. The Soviets also made occasional small infantry assaults with one or two companies. Because of the shortage of ammunition, Finnish artillery emplacements were under orders to fire only against directly threatening ground attacks. On 1 February, the Soviets further escalated their artillery and air bombardments.
Although the Soviets refined their tactics and morale improved, the generals were still willing to accept massive losses to reach their objectives. Soviet attacks were now being screened by smoke, heavy artillery, and armour support, but the infantry charged in the open and in dense formations. Unlike their tactics in December, Soviet tanks advanced in smaller numbers. The Finns could not easily eliminate tanks if infantry troops protected them. After 10 days of constant artillery barrage, the Soviets achieved a breakthrough on the Western Karelian Isthmus in the Second Battle of Summa.
By 11 February, the Soviets had approximately 460,000 soldiers, 3,350 artillery pieces, 3,000 tanks and 1,300 aircraft deployed on the Karelian Isthmus. The Red Army was constantly receiving new recruits after the breakthrough. Opposing them, the Finns had eight divisions, totalling about 150,000 soldiers. One by one, the defenders' strongholds crumbled under the Soviet attacks and the Finns were forced to retreat. On 15 February, Mannerheim authorised a general retreat of the II Corps to a fallback line of defence. On the eastern side of the isthmus, the Finns continued to resist Soviet assaults, achieving a stalemate in the battle of Taipale.
Peace negotiations: Although the Finns attempted to re-open negotiations with Moscow by every means during the war, the Soviets did not respond. In early January, Finnish communist Hella Wuolijoki contacted the Finnish Government. She offered to contact Moscow through the Soviet Union's ambassador to Sweden, Alexandra Kollontai. Wuolijoki departed for Stockholm and met Kollontai secretly at a hotel. On 29 January, Molotov put an end to the puppet Terijoki Government and recognized the Ryti–Tanner government as the legal government of Finland, informing it that the USSR was willing to negotiate peace.
By mid-February, it became clear that the Finnish forces were rapidly approaching exhaustion. For the Soviets, casualties were high, the situation was a source of political embarrassment to the Soviet regime, and there was a risk of Franco-British intervention (which was overestimated by Soviet intelligence in February and March 1940). With the spring thaw approaching, the Soviet forces risked becoming bogged down in the forests. Finnish Foreign Minister Väinö Tanner arrived in Stockholm on 12 February and negotiated the peace terms with the Soviets through the Swedes. German representatives, not aware that the negotiations were underway, suggested on 17 February that Finland negotiate with the Soviet Union.
Both Germany and Sweden were keen to see an end to the Winter War. The Germans feared losing the iron ore fields in Northern Sweden and threatened to attack at once if the Swedes granted the Allied forces right of passage. The German invasion plan, named Studie Nord, was later implemented as Operation Weserübung. Leon Trotsky opined after the war that Hitler would view a Soviet occupation of Finland as a threat to this plan. Any potential German plans for bases in Finland would also be thwarted if the Soviets occupied Finland, though Trotsky himself believed that Hitler was not interested in occupying Finland, but rather its role as a buffer between Germany and the USSR.
As the Finnish Cabinet hesitated in the face of harsh Soviet conditions, Sweden's King Gustav V made a public statement on 19 February in which he confirmed having declined Finnish pleas for support from Swedish troops. On 25 February, the Soviet peace terms were spelt out in detail. On 29 February, the Finnish Government accepted the Soviet terms in principle and was willing to enter into negotiations. Red Army commanders wished to continue the war as their forces were starting to make progress against the Finns, whereas the Communist Party pointed out that the war was becoming too costly and called for the signing of a peace treaty. The party believed that Finland could be taken over later by means of a revolution. The heated discussion that ensued failed to yield any clear result and the matter went to a vote, in which the party's opinion prevailed and the decision was taken to bring hostilities to an end. |
mil_tactics_continued_pretraining.csv | Winter War | As the Finnish Cabinet hesitated in the face of harsh Soviet conditions, Sweden's King Gustav V made a public statement on 19 February in which he confirmed having declined Finnish pleas for support from Swedish troops. On 25 February, the Soviet peace terms were spelt out in detail. On 29 February, the Finnish Government accepted the Soviet terms in principle and was willing to enter into negotiations. Red Army commanders wished to continue the war as their forces were starting to make progress against the Finns, whereas the Communist Party pointed out that the war was becoming too costly and called for the signing of a peace treaty. The party believed that Finland could be taken over later by means of a revolution. The heated discussion that ensued failed to yield any clear result and the matter went to a vote, in which the party's opinion prevailed and the decision was taken to bring hostilities to an end.
End of war in March: On 5 March, the Red Army advanced 10 to 15 km (6.2 to 9.3 mi) past the Mannerheim Line and entered the suburbs of Viipuri. The same day, the Red Army established a beachhead on the Western Gulf of Viipuri. The Finns proposed an armistice on 6 March, but the Soviets, wanting to keep the pressure on the Finnish government, declined the offer. The Finnish peace delegation travelled to Moscow via Stockholm and arrived on 7 March. They were disappointed to find that Stalin was not present during peace negotiations, likely due to the Red Army's humiliation by the Finns. The Soviets had further demands, as their military position was strong and improving. On 9 March, the Finnish military situation on the Karelian Isthmus was dire, as troops were experiencing heavy casualties. Artillery ammunition was exhausted and weapons were wearing out. The Finnish government, realizing that the hoped-for Franco-British military expedition would not arrive in time, as Norway and Sweden had not given the Allies right of passage, had little choice but to accept the Soviet terms. Finnish President Kyösti Kallio resisted the idea of giving up any territory to the Soviet Union, but eventually agreed to sign the Moscow Peace Treaty. When he signed the document, the tormented president uttered the well-known words: "Let the hand wither that signs this monstrous treaty!"
Moscow Peace Treaty: The Moscow Peace Treaty was signed in Moscow on 12 March 1940. A cease-fire took effect the next day at noon Leningrad time, 11 a.m. Helsinki time. With it, Finland ceded the Karelian Isthmus and most of Ladoga Karelia. The area included Viipuri (Finland's second-largest city [Population Register] or fourth-largest city [Church and Civil Register], depending on the census data), much of Finland's industrialised territory, and significant land still held by Finland's military – all in all, nine per cent of Finnish territory. The ceded territory included 13 per cent of Finland's economic assets. 12 per cent of Finland's population, 422,000 to 450,000 Karelians, were evacuated and lost their homes. Finland also ceded a part of the region of Salla, the Rybachy Peninsula in the Barents Sea, and four islands in the Gulf of Finland. The Hanko peninsula was leased to the Soviet Union as a military base for 30 years. The region of Petsamo, captured by the Red Army during the war, was returned to Finland according to the treaty.
Finnish concessions and territorial losses exceeded Soviet pre-war demands. Before the war, the Soviet Union demanded for the frontier with Finland on the Karelian Isthmus to be moved westward to a point 30 kilometres (19 mi) east of Viipuri to the line between Koivisto and Lipola; for existing fortifications on the Karelian Isthmus to be demolished and for the islands of Suursaari, Tytärsaari, and Koivisto in the Gulf of Finland and Rybachy Peninsula to be ceded. In exchange, the Soviet Union proposed to cede Repola and Porajärvi from Eastern Karelia, an area twice as large as the territories that were originally demanded from the Finns.
Foreign support:
Foreign volunteers: World opinion largely supported the Finnish cause, and the Soviet aggression was generally deemed unjustified. World War II had not yet directly affected France, the United Kingdom or the United States; the Winter War was practically the only conflict in Europe at that time and thus held major world interest. Several foreign organisations sent material aid, and many countries granted credit and military materiel to Finland. Nazi Germany allowed arms to pass through its territory to Finland, but after a Swedish newspaper made this public, Adolf Hitler initiated a policy of silence towards Finland, as part of improved German–Soviet relations following the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.
The largest foreign contingent came from neighboring Sweden, which provided nearly 8,760 volunteers during the war. The Volunteer Corps was formed of predominantly Swedes, as well as 1,010 Danes and 727 Norwegians. They fought on the northern front at Salla during the last days of the war. A Swedish unit of Gloster Gladiator fighters, named "the Flight Regiment 19" also participated. Swedish anti-air batteries with Bofors 40 mm (1.6 in) guns were responsible for air defence in northern Finland and the city of Turku. Volunteers arrived from Hungary, Italy and Estonia. 350 American nationals of Finnish background volunteered, and 210 volunteers of other nationalities arrived in Finland before the war ended. Max Manus, a Norwegian, fought in the Winter War before returning to Norway and later achieved fame as a resistance fighter during the German occupation of Norway. In total, Finland received 12,000 volunteers, 50 of whom died during the war. The British actor Christopher Lee volunteered in the war for two weeks, but did not face combat.
White émigrés and Russian prisoners-of-war: Finland officially refused overtures from the anti-Soviet Russian All-Military Union (ROVS) for aid. Nevertheless, Mannerheim eventually agreed to establish a small Russian detachment (Russkaya narodnaya armiya, RNA) of 200 men after being introduced to Boris Bazhanov, a high-ranking ROVS member, in person in January 1940. The project was deemed top secret, and was under the auspices of the intelligence division of the Finnish army headquarters.
The ranks of RNA were to be filled by prisoners-of-war, but it would be commanded by White émigrés instead of captured Soviet Army officers, who were deemed unreliable. Bazhanov's Finnish assistant Feodor Schulgin chose Captain Vladimir Kiseleff, Lieutenant Vladimir Lugovskoy, Anatoly Budyansky and brothers Nikolay and Vladimir Bastamov as officers for the unit. Of the five, the Bastamovs were not Finnish citizens, but had Nansen passports. The prisoners-of-war were trained in Huittinen, although it is possible that some were also trained in Lempäälä.
RNA never participated in battle, despite Boris Bazhanov's later claims to the contrary in his memoirs. About 35 to 40 members of it were present during a battle in Ruskeala in early March 1940, where they spread flyers and broadcast propaganda to encircled Soviet troops, but did not carry weapons. The men were subsequently detained by Finnish forces, who mistook them for Soviet infiltrators. After the war's end, Bazhanov was immediately asked to leave Finland, which he did. Finnish military historian Carl Geust presumes that most members of the RNA were executed after they were returned to the Soviet Union after the war. Additionally, Vladimir Bastamov was later extradited into the Soviet Union as one of the Leino prisoners in 1945, and was sentenced to 20 years of hard labour. He was released after Stalin's death and returned to Finland in 1956.
Franco-British intervention plans: France had been one of the earliest supporters of Finland during the Winter War. The French saw an opportunity to weaken Germany's resource imports via a Finnish counteroffensive, as both Sweden and the Soviet Union were strategic trading partners to Germany. France had another motive, preferring to have a major war in a remote part of Europe rather than on French soil. France planned to re‑arm the Polish exile units and transport them to the Finnish Arctic port of Petsamo. Another proposal was a massive air strike with Turkish co-operation against the Caucasus oil fields.
The British, for their part, wanted to block the flow of iron ore from Swedish mines to Germany as the Swedes supplied up to 40 per cent of Germany's iron demand. The matter was raised by British Admiral Reginald Plunkett on 18 September 1939, and the next day Winston Churchill brought up the subject in the Chamberlain War Cabinet. On 11 December, Churchill opined that the British should gain a foothold in Scandinavia with the objective to help the Finns, but without a war with the Soviet Union. Because of the heavy German reliance on Northern Sweden's iron ore, Hitler had made it clear to the Swedish government in December that any Allied troops on Swedish soil would immediately provoke a German invasion.
On 19 December, French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier introduced his plan to the General Staff and the War Cabinet. |
mil_tactics_continued_pretraining.csv | Winter War | Another proposal was a massive air strike with Turkish co-operation against the Caucasus oil fields.
The British, for their part, wanted to block the flow of iron ore from Swedish mines to Germany as the Swedes supplied up to 40 per cent of Germany's iron demand. The matter was raised by British Admiral Reginald Plunkett on 18 September 1939, and the next day Winston Churchill brought up the subject in the Chamberlain War Cabinet. On 11 December, Churchill opined that the British should gain a foothold in Scandinavia with the objective to help the Finns, but without a war with the Soviet Union. Because of the heavy German reliance on Northern Sweden's iron ore, Hitler had made it clear to the Swedish government in December that any Allied troops on Swedish soil would immediately provoke a German invasion.
On 19 December, French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier introduced his plan to the General Staff and the War Cabinet. In his plan, Daladier created linkage between the war in Finland and the iron ore in Sweden. There was a danger of Finland's possible fall under Soviet hegemony. In turn, Nazi Germany could occupy both Norway and Sweden. These two powers could divide Scandinavia between them, as they had already done with Poland. The main motivation of the French and the British was to reduce German war-making ability.
The Military Co-ordination Committee met on 20 December in London, and two days later the French plan was put forward. The Anglo-French Supreme War Council elected to send notes to Norway and Sweden on 27 December, urging the Norwegians and Swedes to help Finland and offer the Allies their support. Norway and Sweden rejected the offer on 5 January 1940. The Allies came up with a new plan, in which they would demand that Norway and Sweden give them right of passage by citing a League of Nations resolution as justification. The expedition troops would disembark at the Norwegian port of Narvik and proceed by rail toward Finland, passing through the Swedish ore fields on the way. This demand was sent to Norway and Sweden on 6 January, but it was likewise rejected six days later.
Stymied but not yet dissuaded from the possibility of action, the Allies formulated a final plan on 29 January. First, the Finns would make a formal request for assistance. Then, the Allies would ask Norway and Sweden for permission to move the "volunteers" across their territory. Finally, to protect the supply line from German actions, the Allies would send units ashore at Namsos, Bergen, and Trondheim. The operation would have required 100,000 British and 35,000 French soldiers with naval and air support. The supply convoys would sail on 12 March and the landings would begin on 20 March. The end of the war on 13 March cancelled Franco-British plans to send troops to Finland through Northern Scandinavia.
Aftermath and casualties:
Finland: The 105-day war had a profound and depressing effect in Finland. Meaningful international support was minimal and arrived late, and the German blockade had prevented most armament shipments. The 15-month period between the Winter War and Operation Barbarossa, part of which was the Continuation War, was later called the Interim Peace. After the end of the war, the situation of the Finnish Army on the Karelian Isthmus became a subject of debate in Finland. Orders had already been issued to prepare a retreat to the next line of defence in the Taipale sector. Estimates of how long the Red Army could have been delayed by retreat-and-stand operations varied from a few days to a few weeks, or to a couple of months at most.
Immediately after the war, Helsinki officially announced 19,576 dead. According to revised estimates in 2005 by Finnish historians, 25,904 people died or went missing and 43,557 were wounded on the Finnish side during the war. Finnish and Russian researchers have estimated that there were 800–1,100 Finnish prisoners of war, of whom between 10 and 20 per cent died. The Soviet Union repatriated 847 Finns after the War. Air raids killed 957 civilians. Between 20 and 30 tanks were destroyed and 62 aircraft were lost. Also, Finland had to cede all ships of the Finnish Ladoga Naval Detachment to the Soviet Union by virtue of the Moscow Peace Treaty.
During the Interim Peace, Finland aimed to improve its defensive capabilities and conducted negotiations with Sweden on a military alliance, but negotiations ended once it became clear that both Germany and the Soviet Union opposed such an alliance. On 31 July 1940, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler gave the order to plan an assault on the Soviet Union and so Germany had to reassess its position regarding Finland. Until then, Germany had rejected Finnish appeals to purchase arms. However, the prospect of an invasion of the Soviet Union reversed the policy. In August, the secret sale of weapons to Finland was permitted.
Karelian evacuees established an interest group, the Finnish Karelian League, to defend Karelian rights and interests and to find a way to return ceded regions of Karelia to Finland. Finland wished to re-enter the war mainly because of the Soviet invasion of Finland during the Winter War, which had taken place after Finland had failed by relying on the League of Nations and on Nordic neutrality. Finland aimed primarily to reverse its territorial losses from the Moscow Peace Treaty and, depending on the success of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, possibly to expand its borders, especially into East Karelia. Some right-wing groups, such as the Academic Karelia Society, supported a Greater Finland ideology. The Continuation War began in June 1941 and led to Finnish participation in the Siege of Leningrad as well as the Finnish occupation of East Karelia.
Soviet Union: The Soviet General Staff Supreme Command (Stavka) met in April 1940, reviewed the lessons of the Finnish campaign and recommended reforms. The role of frontline political commissars was reduced, and old-fashioned ranks and forms of discipline were reintroduced. Clothing, equipment and tactics for winter operations were improved. Not all of the reforms had been completed when Germans initiated Operation Barbarossa 14 months later.
Between the Winter War and perestroika in the late 1980s, Soviet historiography relied solely on Molotov's speeches on the Winter War. In his radio speech of 29 November 1939, Molotov argued that the Soviet Union had tried to negotiate guarantees of security for Leningrad for two months. The Finns had taken a hostile stance to "please foreign imperialists". Finland had undertaken military provocation, and the Soviet Union could no longer abide by the non-aggression pacts. According to Molotov, the Soviet Union did not want to occupy or annex Finland, but the goal was purely to secure Leningrad.
The official Soviet figure, with reference to the command of the Leningrad Military District, was published at a session of the Supreme Soviet on 26 March 1940, with 48,475 dead and 158,863 sick and wounded. More recent Russian estimates vary: in 1990, Mikhail Semiryaga claimed 53,522 dead, and N. I. Baryshnikov, 53,500. In 1997, Grigoriy Krivosheyev claimed 126,875 dead and missing and total casualties of 391,783, with 188,671 wounded. In 1991, Yuri Kilin claimed 63,990 dead and total casualties of 271,528. In 2007, he revised the estimate of dead to 134,000 and in 2012, he updated the estimate to 138,533. In 2013, Pavel Petrov stated that the Russian State Military Archive has a database confirming 167,976 killed or missing along with the soldiers' names, dates of birth and ranks.
There were 5,572 Soviet prisoners of war in Finland. After the Winter War, the Soviet prisoners were returned to the USSR in accordance with the Moscow Peace Treaty. Of these, 450 were released, 4,354 were sentenced to imprisonment in labour camps ranging from 3 to 10 years and 414 were exposed to be "active in traitorous activities while in captivity", with 334 criminal cases being transferred to the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union; 232 of those cases ended in a death penalty.
Between 1,200 and 3,543 Soviet tanks were destroyed. The official figure was 611 tank casualties, but Yuri Kilin found a note received by the head of the Soviet General Staff, Boris Shaposhnikov, reporting 3,543 tank casualties and 316 tanks destroyed. According to Finnish historian Ohto Manninen, the 7th Soviet Army lost 1,244 tanks during the breakthrough battles of the Mannerheim Line in mid-winter. In the immediate aftermath of the war, the Finnish estimate of the number of lost Soviet tanks was 1,000 to 1,200. The Soviet Air Forces lost around 1,000 aircraft, but fewer than half of them were combat casualties. According to Carl Fredrik Geust, based on the studies of Soviet air force units, Finnish anti-aircraft units shot down 119 and Finnish fighter pilots 131 Soviet aircraft, though all Soviet aircraft losses had been more than 900.
Germany: The Winter War was a political success for the Germans. |
mil_tactics_continued_pretraining.csv | Winter War | The official figure was 611 tank casualties, but Yuri Kilin found a note received by the head of the Soviet General Staff, Boris Shaposhnikov, reporting 3,543 tank casualties and 316 tanks destroyed. According to Finnish historian Ohto Manninen, the 7th Soviet Army lost 1,244 tanks during the breakthrough battles of the Mannerheim Line in mid-winter. In the immediate aftermath of the war, the Finnish estimate of the number of lost Soviet tanks was 1,000 to 1,200. The Soviet Air Forces lost around 1,000 aircraft, but fewer than half of them were combat casualties. According to Carl Fredrik Geust, based on the studies of Soviet air force units, Finnish anti-aircraft units shot down 119 and Finnish fighter pilots 131 Soviet aircraft, though all Soviet aircraft losses had been more than 900.
Germany: The Winter War was a political success for the Germans. Both the Red Army and the League of Nations were humiliated, and the Anglo-French Supreme War Council had been revealed to be chaotic and powerless. The German policy of neutrality was unpopular in the homeland, and relations with Italy had suffered. After the Moscow Peace Treaty, Germany improved its ties with Finland, and within two weeks, Finnish-German relations were at the top of the agenda. More importantly, the very poor performance of the Red Army convinced Hitler that an invasion of the Soviet Union would be successful. In June 1941, Hitler declared, "we have only to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down".
Allies: The Winter War laid bare the disorganisation and ineffectiveness of the Red Army and that of the Allies. The Anglo-French Supreme War Council was unable to formulate a workable plan, revealing its unsuitability to make effective war in either Britain or France. This failure led to the collapse of the Third Daladier Government in France and the nomination of Paul Reynaud as the new Prime Minister of France.
See also:
Explanatory notes:
Citations:
General and cited references:
English:
Finnish, Russian and other languages:
Further reading: Campbell, David (2016). Finnish Soldier vs Soviet Soldier: Winter War 1939–40. Osprey Publishing. ISBN 978-1472813244.
Chew, Allen F. The White Death: The Epic of the Soviet-Finnish Winter War (ISBN 0-87013-167-2).
Cox, Geoffrey (1941). The Red Army Moves. Victor Gollancz. OCLC 502873.
Engle, Eloise and Paananen, Pauri. The Winter War: The Soviet Attack on Finland 1939–1940 (ISBN 0-8117-2433-6).
Hill, Alexander (2017). The Red Army and the Second World War. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-1070-2079-5.
Kolomyjec, Maksim (2011). Tanks in the Winter War 1939–1940. Translated by Dinan, Tim. Leandoer & Ekholm. ISBN 978-9197589529.
Nenye, Vesa; Munter, Peter; Wirtanen, Toni (2015). Finland at War: The Winter War 1939–1945. Osprey Publishing. ISBN 978-1472806314. OCLC 899228795.
Rahikainen, Paavo; Vainio, Ein (1996). Artillery barrage at Taipaleenjoki: Paavo Rahikainen. The battle of Sikniemi. Translated by Mayow, Nicholas. Helsinki: Finnish War Veterans Association. ISBN 978-951-97557-0-0. OCLC 41278218.
Reese, Roger R. (2008). "Lessons of the Winter War: a study in the military effectiveness of the Red Army, 1939–1940". Journal of Military History. 72 (3): 825–852. doi:10.1353/jmh.0.0004. S2CID 110326295.
Saarelainen, Tapio (2016). The White Sniper: Simo Häyhä. Casemate. ISBN 978-1612004297.
Sander, Gordon F. (2013). The Hundred Day Winter War: Finland's Gallant Stand against the Soviet Army. University Press of Kansas. ISBN 978-0700619108. (online review)
Soviet Information Bureau (1948). Falsifiers of History (Historical Survey) (1st ed.). Gospolitizdat & Foreign Languages Publishing House. OCLC 155723998.
Taylor, Alan (23 May 2013). "Finland in World War II". The Atlantic.
Trotter, William R.: A Frozen Hell: The Russo-Finnish Winter War of 1939–1940 (ISBN 1-56512-249-6).
Tuunainen, Pasi (2016). Finnish Military Effectiveness in the Winter War, 1939–1940. Palgrave Macmillan. doi:10.1057/978-1-137-44606-0. ISBN 978-1-137-44606-0.
Tuuri, Antti (2003) [1984]. The Winter War. Aspasia Books, Inc. ISBN 097310533X.
Weeks, Jessica L. 2014. Dictators at War and Peace, Ch. 4. Cornell University Press.
Woody, Christopher (1 December 2017). "These 17 photos show Finland's brutally cold World War II battle with the Soviet Union". Business Insider UK. Archived from the original on 19 February 2023. Retrieved 11 January 2018.
External links:
Военный альбом (photographs of the Soviet–Finnish War 1939–1940)
Finna (search service for information from Finnish archives, libraries and museums)
Finnish Wartime Photograph Archive (under CC BY 4.0)
Fire and Ice: The Winter War of Finland and Russia (Winter War history from a documentary film's website)
National Archives of the United Kingdom |
mil_tactics_continued_pretraining.csv | Withdrawal (military) | Tactical withdrawal: A withdrawal may be anticipated, as when a defending force is outmatched or on disadvantageous ground, but it must cause as much damage to an enemy as possible. In such a case, the retreating force may use a number of tactics and strategies to further impede the enemy's progress. That could include setting mines or booby traps during or before the withdrawal, leading the enemy into prepared artillery barrages, or using of scorched-earth tactics.
Rout: In warfare, the long-term objective is the defeat of the enemy. An effective tactical method is the demoralisation of the enemy by defeating its army and routing it from the battlefield. Once a force has become disorganized and has lost its ability to fight, the victors can chase down the enemy's remnants and attempt to cause as many casualties or to take as many prisoners as possible.
However, a commander must weigh the advantages of pursuit of a disorganised enemy against the possibility that the enemy may rally and leave the pursuing force vulnerable, with longer lines of communications that are vulnerable to a counterattack. That causes the value of a feigned retreat.
Feigned retreat: The act of feigning a withdrawal or rout to lure an enemy away from a defended position or into a prepared ambush is an ancient tactic, which has been used throughout the history of warfare.
Three famous examples are:
William the Conqueror used a feigned retreat at the Battle of Hastings to lure much of Harold's infantry from their advantageous defenses on higher ground, leading to its annihilation by a charge of William's Norman cavalry.
Medieval Mongols were famed for, among other things, their extensive use of feigned retreats during their conquests, as their fast light cavalry made successful pursuit by an enemy almost impossible. In the heat and muddle of a battle, the Mongol Army would pretend to be defeated, exhausted and confused, and would suddenly retreat from the battlefield. The opposing force, thinking that it had routed the Mongols, would give chase. The Mongol cavalry would, while retreating, fire upon its pursuers and dishearten them (see Parthian shot). When the pursuing forces stopped chasing the (significantly faster) Mongol cavalry, the Mongols would then turn and charge the pursuers and generally succeed. That was used partly as a defeat in detail tactic to allow the Mongols to defeat larger armies by breaking them into smaller groups.
Early on during the Battle of Kasserine Pass in 1943, tanks of the US 1st Armored Division followed what appeared to be a headlong retreat by elements of the 21st Panzer Division. The advancing US forces then met a screen of German anti-tank guns, who opened fire and destroyed nearly all the American tanks. A US forward artillery observer, whose radio and landlines had been cut by shellfire, recalled:
"It was murder. They rolled right into the muzzles of the concealed eighty-eights and all I could do was stand by and watch tank after tank blown to bits or burst into flames or just stop, wrecked. Those in the rear tried to turn back but the eighty-eights seemed to be everywhere."
References:
External links: Barton, James. "Tactical Reasons for Retreat". Retrieved 2021-05-06. |
mil_tactics_continued_pretraining.csv | Women in the military | History:
World War I:
United States: During the First World War, women in the United States joined organizations such as the Committee on Public Information to educate people about the war. This committee also promoted nationalism. Many women became YWCA members and went overseas to help soldiers. Women of all classes contributed to the war effort. Upper-class women founded many voluntary war organizations while middle and lower-class women worked in these organizations as nurses or by filling in open positions left by those who had gone to war.
Russia: Russia is the only nation to deploy female combat troops in substantial numbers. Historically, female recruits either joined the military in disguise or were tacitly accepted by their units. Perhaps the most prominent was a contingent of front-line light cavalry in a Cossack regiment commanded from 1915 to 1917 by a female colonel, Alexandra Kudasheva (1873–1921?). This cavalry regiment fought in WWI and also during the Russian Revolution. and may have been the first gender-integrated regiment in Russian history. She was also noted for her endurance riding feats.
Others included Maria Bochkareva, who was decorated three times and promoted to senior NCO rank, while The New York Times reported that a group of twelve schoolgirls from Moscow had enlisted together disguised as young men. In 1917, the Provisional Government raised a number of "Women's Battalions", with Maria Bochkareva given an officer's commission in command. They were disbanded before the end of the year. In the later Russian Civil War, they fought both for the Bolsheviks (infantry) and the White Guard.
Others: In Serbia, some women played key military roles. Scottish doctor Elsie Ingles coordinated a retreat of approximately 8,000 Serbian troops through Romania and revolutionary Russia, up to Scandinavia, and finally onto transport ships back to England. Milunka Savić enlisted in the Serbian army in place of her brother. She fought throughout the war, becoming one of the most decorated women in military history.
In 1917, Loretta Walsh became the first woman in the United States to enlist openly as a woman. In the 1918 Finnish Civil War, more than 2,000 women fought in the Women's Red Guards.
Spanish Civil War: During the Spanish Civil War, thousands of women fought in mixed-gender combat and rearguard units, or as part of militias.
Second Sino-Japanese War: Several women's battalions were established in China during the Second Sino-Japanese War. These included the Guangxi Women's Battalion, the Yunnan Women's Battlefield Service Unit, Zhejiang Women's Guerrilla Band, Hunan War Service Corps, and others.
World War II: All the major participating nations in World War II enlisted women. The majority served in nursing and clerical or support roles. Over 500,000 women had combat roles in anti-aircraft units in Britain and Germany, as well as front-line units in the Soviet Union.
United States
During World War II in 1941, there was a total of 350,000 women who served in the United States Armed Forces. Women weren't thought to be qualified during these times, however due to the situation the United States decided to have women work in factories making items like aircraft, weapons, and submarines, although for lower pay than men.
India: In 1942, the Indian National Army (Azaad Hind Fauj) established Rani of Jhansi Regiment, India's first all-women regiment to fight for Indian independence under the leadership of Subash Chandra Bose, with Japanese assistance. It is estimated that over 1,000 women served in the regiment.
United Kingdom: In 1938, the British established uniformed services for women (small units of nurses had long been in service). In late 1941, Britain began conscripting women, sending most into factories and some into the military, especially the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) attached to the army. The ATS began as a women's auxiliary in 1938. In 1941, the ATS was granted military status, although women received only two-thirds of male pay. Women had a well-publicized role in handling anti-aircraft guns against German planes and V-1 missiles. Prime Minister Winston Churchill's daughter was there, and he said that any general who saved him 40,000 fighting men had gained the equivalent of a victory. By August 1941, women were operating fire-control instruments; although they were never allowed to pull the trigger, since killing the enemy was considered too masculine. By 1943, 56,000 women were in Anti-Aircraft Command, mostly in units close to London where they faced a risk of death, but not of capture. The first death of a woman in Anti-Aircraft Command occurred in April 1942.
Germany: The Third Reich had similar roles for women. The SS-Helferinnen were regarded as part of the SS if they had undergone training at a Reichsschule SS. All other female workers were contracted to the SS and chosen largely from concentration camps. Women served in auxiliary units in the navy (Kriegshelferinnen), air force (Luftnachrichtenhelferinnen) and army (Nachrichtenhelferin).
In 1944-45 roughly 500,000 women were volunteer uniformed auxiliaries in the German armed forces (Wehrmacht). Approximately the same number served in civil aerial defense. 400,000 volunteered as nurses and many more replaced drafted men in the wartime economy. In the Luftwaffe, women served in combat roles helping to operate anti-aircraft systems to shoot down Allied bombers. By 1945, German women held 85% of the billets as clerics, accountants, interpreters, laboratory workers and administrative workers, together with half of the clerical and junior administrative posts in high-level field headquarters.
The German nursing service consisted of four main organizations: one for Catholics, one for Protestants, the secular DRK (Red Cross), and the "Brown Nurses" for committed Nazi women. Military nursing was primarily handled by the DRK, which came under partial Nazi control. Front line medical services were provided by male medics and doctors. Red Cross nurses served widely within the military medical services, staffing the hospitals close to the front lines and at risk of attack. Two dozen nurses were awarded the Iron Cross for heroism under fire. Brown Nurses were forced to look away while their incapacitated patients were murdered by war criminals.
Hundreds of women auxiliaries (Aufseherin) served in the SS in the camps, the majority of which were at Ravensbrück.
In Germany, women worked and were told by Hitler to produce more pure Aryan children to fight in future wars.
Women also fought in the Volkssturm near the end of World War Two. Girls as young as 14 years were trained in the use of small arms, panzerfaust, machine guns, and hand grenades from December 1944 through May 1945.
Japanese American Women: During the Second World War, many Japanese American women lost their jobs or pay because they were sent to relocation camps. Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans were faced with discrimination. Many Americans called it the "yellow peril" and called Japanese people "japs". In 1913, California passed the Alien Land Law which prohibited "aliens ineligible for citizenship" from owning land to grow crops on. Despite the discrimination, many Japanese American women volunteered to serve in the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps. Sexism along with racism was something that these women faced when they joined WAAC. Even while dealing with discrimination, Japanese American women were able to greatly help the United States. Many women were hired as interpreters, translators, and interrogators in the Military Intelligence Service. In 1948, the Women's Army Corps was permanently established and remained until 1978 when women were allowed into the army.
Italy: In Italy, during the second world war, the Female Auxiliary Service (Italian: Servizio Ausiliario Femminile, SAF) was a women's corps of the armed forces of the Italian Social Republic, whose components, all voluntary, were commonly referred to as auxiliaries. The commander was the Brig. Gen. Piera Gatteschi Fondelli.
Yugoslav Partisans: The Yugoslav National Liberation Movement had 6,000,000 civilian supporters; its two million women formed the Antifascist Front of Women (AFŽ), in which the revolutionary coexisted with the traditional. The AFŽ managed schools, hospitals and local governments. About 100,000 women served with 600,000 men in Tito's Yugoslav National Liberation Army. It stressed its dedication to women's rights and gender equality and used the imagery of folklore heroines to attract and legitimize the fighters. After the war, although women were relegated to traditional gender roles, Yugoslavia's historians emphasized women's roles in the resistance. After Yugoslavia broke up in the 1990s, women's contributions to the resistance were forgotten.
Jewish Parachutists of Mandate Palestine: The Jewish Parachutists of Mandate Palestine were a group of 250 Jewish men and women from the Yishuv communities in Mandatory Palestine. The group members would go to missions run by British organisations MI9 and the Special Operations Executive (SOE) involving parachuting into German-occupied Europe. |
mil_tactics_continued_pretraining.csv | Women in the military | The AFŽ managed schools, hospitals and local governments. About 100,000 women served with 600,000 men in Tito's Yugoslav National Liberation Army. It stressed its dedication to women's rights and gender equality and used the imagery of folklore heroines to attract and legitimize the fighters. After the war, although women were relegated to traditional gender roles, Yugoslavia's historians emphasized women's roles in the resistance. After Yugoslavia broke up in the 1990s, women's contributions to the resistance were forgotten.
Jewish Parachutists of Mandate Palestine: The Jewish Parachutists of Mandate Palestine were a group of 250 Jewish men and women from the Yishuv communities in Mandatory Palestine. The group members would go to missions run by British organisations MI9 and the Special Operations Executive (SOE) involving parachuting into German-occupied Europe. The group had women and man and one of her most known members were Chana Senesh and Haviva Reik whom were subsequently executed.
Vietnam War: Though relatively little official data exists about female Vietnam War veterans, the Vietnam Women's Memorial Foundation estimates that approximately 11,000 military women were stationed in Vietnam during the conflict. Nearly all of them were volunteers, and 90 percent served as military nurses, though women also worked as physicians, air traffic controllers, intelligence officers, clerks and other positions in the U.S. Women's Army Corps, U.S. Navy, Air Force and Marines and the Army Medical Specialist Corps. In addition to women in the armed forces, an unknown number of civilian women served in Vietnam on behalf of the Red Cross, United Service Organizations (USO), Catholic Relief Services and other humanitarian organizations, or as foreign correspondents for various news organizations.
In addition to the U.S. military women who served in Vietnam, an unknown number of female civilians willingly gave their services on Vietnamese soil during the conflict. Many of them worked on behalf of the American Red Cross, Army Special Services, United Service Organizations (USO), Peace Corps, and various religious groups such as Catholic Relief Services.
Democratic Republic of the Congo: The Democratic Republic of the Congo began training an initial 150 women as para-commandos for the Armée Nationale Congolaise in 1967. Many more were trained subsequently, over a period of years. The women received parachute and weapons training, although it is unclear to what extent they were actually integrated into the combat units of the Congo.
Eritrea: In 1999, the BBC reported that about a quarter of the Eritrean soldiers in the Eritrean–Ethiopian War were women.
Israel: Mandatory conscription for single and married women without children began in 1948.
Initially, women conscripts served in the Women's Army Corps, serving as clerks, drivers, welfare workers, nurses, radio operators, flight controllers, ordnance personnel, and instructors. Roles for women beyond technical and secretarial support began opening up in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
In 2000, the Equality amendment to the Military Service law granted equal opportunities in the military to women found physically and personally suitable for a job. Women started to enter combat support and light combat roles in a few areas, including the Artillery Corps, infantry units and armored divisions. A few platoons named Carakal were formed for men and women to serve together in light infantry. Many women joined the Border Police.
Despite these changes, as of 2014, fewer than 4 percent of women service members were in combat positions such as infantry, crew of tanks or other armored vehicles, artillery guns service, fighter pilots, etc. Rather, they are concentrated in "combat-support".
In 2023, the mostly-female Caracal battalion was involved in intense fighting when Hamas militants infiltrated the border area near Gaza in October 2023. The female soldiers battled militants for nearly four hours as part of the broader effort to repel the incursion. By some accounts, they played a decisive part in the clashes, with estimates that the unit killed around 100 Hamas members. None of the female combat soldiers were killed during the engagement, which has been characterized as a validation of their abilities. The unit's performance in real-world combat against Hamas is also seen as proof that women can execute infantry missions effectively when given the requisite training.
Gulf War: In 1990 and 1991, some 40,000 American military women were deployed during the Gulf War operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm; however, no women served in combat. A policy enacted in 1994 prohibited women from assignment to ground combat units below the brigade level. Two women were taken prisoner by Iraqi forces and both of them were threatened and abused.
21st century: The proportion of female military personnel varies internationally, with approximately 3% in India, 10% in the UK, 15% in France, 13% in Sweden, 16% in the US, 15.3% in Canada, and 27% in South Africa. In the United States, approximately 16% of the 2013 West Point class consisted of women. While a marginal percentage of women are reported in military service globally, estimates following the increasing trend of military women capped predictions at about 10% for 1980.
In 2021, the Nigerian Army deployed 300 female soldiers to secure Kaduna-Abuja expressway.
Combat: Some nations allow female soldiers to serve in certain combat arms positions. Others exclude them for various reasons, including physical demands and privacy policies. Among the NATO nations, and as of the mid-1970s, women were able to attain military status in the following countries: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Non-conscription countries, notably the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada, are where the highest levels of female military presences have been achieved. Canada is marked as particularly progressive in its early implementation of gender equality practices. A rise in the call for equal opportunity coupled with the decline of able-bodied men willing to enter military service coaxed countries to reform policies toward female inclusion. With the opening of submarine service in 2000, women had free rein to enlist in any kind of military service.
United States: The United States military opens all positions to women. Units such as Special Operations require members to meet extraordinary requirements, and very few women have met them. As of 2024, it is reported that three women have completed the Army's elite Special Forces course, two have completed Navy Special Warfare Training to become a Naval Special Warfare combatant-craft crewman, one has completed the Air Force special tactics courses necessary to become a Combat Controller, three have completed the Air Force training necessary to become a Tactical Air Control Party airman, and one has completed the Air Force's elite Special Reconnaissance course.
Women have not historically been required to register for Selective Services; however, federal judge Gray Miller of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas, ruled on February 2, 2019 that an all-male draft is unconstitutional. The issue was brought when Marc Angelucci sued the Selective Service on behalf of the National Coalition for Men. Subsequently, the Fifth Circuit overturned Miller's ruling, sending the case to the Supreme Court who would refuse to hear it. June 2021, Supreme Court Justices Sotomayor, Breyer, and Kavanaugh authored an opinion stating the draft to be likely unconstitutional, and under review since 2016, by Congress and the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service.
History: Women have been involved in the U.S. military since 1775, originally in the civilian fields of nursing, laundering, mending clothing and cooking.
Deborah Sampson was one of the first women to enlist while disguised as a man. She was unhappy with her limited role in the American Revolution. She served in a light infantry unit, fighting in many battles. Injuries put her in a hospital where her secret was discovered. Her commanding officer, General John Paterson, honorably discharged her and thanked her for her service.
Many women contributed to the American Civil War, through nursing, spying, and fighting on the battlefield. For example, Belle Royd began her career as a spy and messenger at age 17. By age 20, she became famous in the United States and was dubbed the Cleopatra of the Confederacy. As a spy, she provided confederate leaders with valuable information. She was arrested multiple times and imprisoned. Eventually, she was banished from federal soil and was told she would receive a death sentence if she were caught on federal soil again. Those who fought in the war disguised themselves as males and went by men's aliases. It wasn't difficult for women to conceal their true identities because soldiers showered separately and were fully clothed the majority of the time. In addition, both men and women would join the army with no previous military experience, so their training was very similar and the women would not stand out.
Sophronia Smith Hunt disguised herself as a man and served at the Battle of Jenkins' Ferry. She fought alongside her first husband, who was wounded in the battle and later died.
The most common way for women to be discovered was through injury. For instance, in 1861, Mary Owens claimed to have enlisted in the Union Army disguised as the "brother" of William Evans, with whom she was in a romantic relationship. |
mil_tactics_continued_pretraining.csv | Women in the military | Eventually, she was banished from federal soil and was told she would receive a death sentence if she were caught on federal soil again. Those who fought in the war disguised themselves as males and went by men's aliases. It wasn't difficult for women to conceal their true identities because soldiers showered separately and were fully clothed the majority of the time. In addition, both men and women would join the army with no previous military experience, so their training was very similar and the women would not stand out.
Sophronia Smith Hunt disguised herself as a man and served at the Battle of Jenkins' Ferry. She fought alongside her first husband, who was wounded in the battle and later died.
The most common way for women to be discovered was through injury. For instance, in 1861, Mary Owens claimed to have enlisted in the Union Army disguised as the "brother" of William Evans, with whom she was in a romantic relationship. To avoid combat, Owens claimed she took the job of delivering handwritten messages to commanders on the battlefield. After her lover was killed in battle, Mary said she decided to avenge his death by fighting on the battlefield. She sustained an injury to her forehead and was sent to the hospital for treatment, where her female identity was revealed. She was discharged from the military. Those who were discovered would either be sent home or punished. Mary was supposedly warmly welcomed back into her town.
Other disguised women were uncovered by chance. Sarah Collins was a strong woman who believed she could do the job of a male soldier. Her brother, also a soldier, assisted her in disguising as a man by cutting her hair short and dressing her up in men's apparel. Her true identity was discovered due to her improperly placing her shoes. Sarah was then sent home while her brother remained fighting.
It is difficult for historians to estimate the true number of women who fought in the war because of their disguises and aliases, as well as their desire for discretion. Women joined the fray of the Civil War for similar reasons as men: the promise of a steady wage, innate sense of patriotism, or the thrill of an adventure. Some women would even follow their loved ones into battle.
In 1917, Loretta Walsh became the first woman to enlist openly as a woman when she join the Navy. A 1948 law made women a permanent part of the military services. In 1976, the first group of women was admitted into a U.S. military academy. Approximately 16% of the 2013 West Point class consisted of women.
In 1990 and 1991, some 40,000 American military women were deployed during the Gulf War operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm; however, no women served in combat. A policy enacted in 1994 prohibited women from assignment to ground combat units below the brigade level.
Policy changes: Until 1993, 67 percent of the positions in the Army were open to women.
In 2013, 15.6 percent of the Army's 1.1 million soldiers, including National Guard And Reserve, were female, serving in 95 percent of occupations. As of 2017, 78 percent of the positions in the Army were open to women. It was only in 2015 that the Department of Defense dropped its ban on women in combat roles, and integration of women into these MOS's has been slow. In the U.S. Air Force, in 2015, 99% of career fields are open to women, with the exceptions of Special Tactics Officer, Combat Control, Special Operations Weather Technician, Combat Rescue Officer, Pararescue and Tactical Air Control Party.
In 2013, female US Army soldiers enrolled in a training course designed by Combined Joint Task Force Paladin, specifically designed for Female Engagement Team members. The course was intended to train female soldiers for tasks such as unexploded ordnance awareness, biometrics, forensics, evidence collection, tactical questioning, vehicle and personnel searches, and homemade explosive devices.
By May 2015, none of the nineteen women vying to become the first female Army Rangers had passed Ranger School. Eleven of the nineteen dropped out in the first four days. Of the remaining eight who failed in the next step, three were given the option to restart from the beginning. Two graduated in August 2015. A third graduated in October 2015.
In April 2015, the Marine Corps' Infantry Officer Course, which had been gender-integrated for two and a half years for research purposes, ended without a single female graduate. The final two participants failed the initial Combat Endurance Test.
In 2016, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter opened all military occupations to women, without exception. This opened up roughly 10% of all military jobs that had previously been closed to women, including positions in infantry, armor, reconnaissance, and some special operations units.
Women have been injured, killed, and awarded high honors. Two women received the Silver Star for their actions in combat: Sergeant Leigh Ann Hester in 2005 and Army Specialist Monica Lin Brown in 2007. Over 10,000 combat action badges were awarded to women who served in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In 2022, the United States Army revised its 40-year-old fitness test – the Army Physical Fitness Test – with the new Army Combat Fitness Test. The test originally included leg tucks and was graded on an even field between age and gender. These factors lead to a low portion of female soldiers meeting adequate fitness scores, with 44% failing. The Army has since updated the exam, replacing leg tucks with a plank and grading based on a matrix that accounts for age and gender. This policy change allowed a majority of female soldiers to meet standards and set a precedent for breaking uniformity in expectations.
In February 2023, a series of new policies were published by the US Defense Department in order to support military members. Anyone who receives an abortion could travel out of state and receive three weeks of administrative leave.
Physical, social, and cultural issues: A 2015 Marine Corps study found that women in a unit created to assess female combat performance were significantly injured twice as often as men, were less accurate with infantry weapons, and were less skilled at removing wounded troops from the battlefield.
The study assessed a nine-month experiment at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, and Twentynine Palms, California. About 400 Marines, including 100 women, volunteered to participate.
Male squads, teams, and crews demonstrated better performance on 93 of 134 tasks evaluated (69 percent) than units with women in them. Male units were faster while completing tactical movements in combat situations, especially in units with large "crew-served" weapons such as heavy machine guns and mortars. Male infantry squads had better accuracy than squads with women in them, with "a notable difference between genders for every individual weapons system" used by infantry rifleman units. The M4 carbine, M27 infantry automatic rifle, and M203 single-shot grenade launcher were assessed.
Male Marines who had not received infantry training were more accurate than women who had received training. In removing wounded troops from the battlefield, "notable differences in execution times were found between all-male and gender-integrated groups".
Unit cohesion was lower in mixed-gender units. Many female soldiers reported that the way they are viewed by male soldiers is often detrimental to their participation. For instance, female soldiers are often labeled as "either standoffish or a slut". In order to avoid such labels, female soldiers have to spend time with fellow soldiers strategically, without spending too much time with any one of them. This approach often has an isolating effect. In several instances, women were considered less skilled than male soldiers, so were not given opportunities to complete tasks for which they were qualified.
According to Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman, author of On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, Israeli soldiers reacted with uncontrollable protectiveness and aggression after seeing a woman wounded. Further, Islamic militants rarely, if ever, surrender to female soldiers, lessening the IDF's ability to take prisoners. Iraqi and Afghan civilians are often not intimidated by female soldiers. However, in socially conservative environments, female combat soldiers can search female civilians, and children and women are more likely to talk to female soldiers than to male soldiers.
Sexual harassment and assault: One 2009 report concluded that military women were three times more likely to be raped than civilians, and that women soldiers in Iraq were more likely to be attacked by another soldier than by an insurgent. In 1988, the first military-wide sexual harassment survey found that 64% of military women had been subjected to some form of sexual harassment. The most affected were Native Americans, followed by Hispanics and African-Americans.
U.S. Senator Martha McSally, an Arizona Republican, said during a Senate meeting on sexual assault in the military that she was raped by a superior officer in the U.S. Air Force. McSally was the first female combat pilot in the U.S. Air Force. She said that she never reported it because so many people did not trust the system, she blamed herself, was ashamed and confused, and thought she was strong but felt powerless.
Sexual assault: What it is and the process: Sexual assault is more likely to occur in the military than in the civilian population. One-in-four active-duty female military personnel will be sexually assaulted. The military has a Code of Justice which defines sexual assault, rape, aggravated assault, abusive sexual assault, nonconsensual sodomy (forced oral or anal sex), or attempts to commit these acts. |
mil_tactics_continued_pretraining.csv | Women in the military | The most affected were Native Americans, followed by Hispanics and African-Americans.
U.S. Senator Martha McSally, an Arizona Republican, said during a Senate meeting on sexual assault in the military that she was raped by a superior officer in the U.S. Air Force. McSally was the first female combat pilot in the U.S. Air Force. She said that she never reported it because so many people did not trust the system, she blamed herself, was ashamed and confused, and thought she was strong but felt powerless.
Sexual assault: What it is and the process: Sexual assault is more likely to occur in the military than in the civilian population. One-in-four active-duty female military personnel will be sexually assaulted. The military has a Code of Justice which defines sexual assault, rape, aggravated assault, abusive sexual assault, nonconsensual sodomy (forced oral or anal sex), or attempts to commit these acts.
All of these acts are punishable by military law, which begins with the victim going forward to their commander. It is then the commander's job to make an inquiry on the perpetrator, however, they also have the right to dismiss the claims. They also have the right to issue non-judicial punishment or take the claim to a higher authority. The perpetrator's punishment can range from dismissal to dishonorable discharge, to confinement in military prison. If convicted of rape, the perpetrator could be imprisoned for life or in extreme cases even executed. 83 percent of women who reported sexual assault stated that their experiences with military legal personnel made them reluctant to seek further help.
Many victims in the military describe the response to and aftermath of sexual assault as more painful than the assault itself because of the unspoken "code of silence", which implies that women should keep quiet about their assault and not come forward to take action. Women expect that little will be done, so most cases go unreported. When they are reported and taken to court, only ten percent of cases have the perpetrator charged for their crimes.
Female soldiers have developed several techniques for avoiding sexual assault "including: (1) relying on support networks [buddy systems], (2) capitalizing on their status (associated with rank, age, time spent in the military, or prior deployment experience, and (3) masking femininity through clothing to minimize violence exposure and to keep themselves and others safe during military service". Such strategies leave the burden of addressing the problem on potential victims. Conversely, in many units, soldiers pair off as "buddies" who watch out for each other. In mostly male units, females buddy up with males, who then often become excessively protective, reducing the female's agency.
A lawsuit seeks redress for military plaintiffs who claim to have been subjected to sexual assault. The Invisible War addresses this lawsuit and topic.
Effects of sexual assault: Sexual assault leads to many health problems, such as anxiety disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, substance abuse, binge eating, dissociation and memory impairment, suicidal and parasuicidal behavior, sexual dysfunction and dissatisfaction, poor self-esteem, and personality disorders, such as borderline personality disorder. It also takes a toll on physical health, and many women have reported menstrual complications, headaches, back pain, and gastrointestinal pain.
All of these factors make it hard for women to stay in the military; sexual assault is the leading cause for early leave of women in the armed forces. Working for — and living alongside — perpetrators of sexual violence exacerbates the difficulties that victims in the military face. This close relationship creates a new type of trauma as the victim is forced to see the perpetrator every day, fomenting distrust in others. Once leaving the military, these women often have a hard time reintegrating back into society. Difficulties include challenges with close relationships, occupational adjustments and homelessness.
A 2000 study found that these women were more likely to fail to complete college and earn incomes less than $25,000. Their work can involve frequent interactions with their attacker, which damages trust in the institution. Perpetrators are typically in a higher position and are supposed to have protected the woman, which can increase trauma.
Updated military training focuses on bystander interventions and the role of consent in sexual activity, emphasizing the responsibility of male soldiers. Some female soldiers assume the classically male role of "protector". This works to change women's "responsibility for preventing rape" and requires that male soldiers acknowledge their responsibility to engage with female soldiers in all activities.
Women on submarines: In 1985, the Royal Norwegian Navy became the first navy in the world to permit female personnel to serve in submarines. The first female submarine commander was Captain Solveig Krey aboard the first Kobben class submarine on September 11, 1995. The Danish Navy allowed women on submarines in 1988, the Swedish Navy in 1989, followed by the Royal Australian Navy in 1998, Canada in 2000 and Spain.
On April 29, 2010, the United States Navy authorized women to serve aboard submarines. Previously, objections such as the need for separate accommodation and facilities (estimates that modifying submarines to accommodate women would cost $300,000 per bunk versus $4,000 per bunk on aircraft carriers) had prevented the change. The Navy stated that larger SSGN and SSBN submarines had more available space and could accommodate female officers with little/no modification. Qualified female candidates with the desire to serve were available. (Women then represented 15 percent of active duty sailors and were earning about half of all science and engineering bachelor's degrees.)
In May 2014, it was announced that three women had become the UK Royal Navy's first female submariners.
On November 15, 2017, the first Argentinean female submarine officer, Eliana Krawczyk, disappeared in the Atlantic Ocean after the Argentine Navy lost contact with the submarine ARA San Juan after a reported failure in the electric system. As one of the 44 crew members lost at sea, Krawczyk was honored by the country's Jewish community as "La Reina De Los Mares" on International Women's Day in 2018.
On July 4, 2017, after two years of training, four female officers boarded a French SSBN for France's first seventy-day mixed gender patrol. The next generation of French submarines is designed to welcome women.
Women are expected to join submarine crews in the Royal Netherlands Navy in 2019, with the addition of shower doors and changing-room curtains.
In 2020, Risa Takenouchi became the first female student to enroll in Japan's MSDF Submarine Training Center, following the overturning of restrictions on women submariners.
Academic studies: A 2021 study which randomly assigned some men in Norwegian bootcamp to mixed-gender squads and others to male squads found that men in the integrated squads did not perform worse or become less satisfied with their service than the other men, either during boot camp or their subsequent military assignment. Furthermore, the men in the integrated squads developed more egalitarian attitudes.
A 2008 study found that female cadets saw military training as an "opportunity to be strong, assertive and skillful" and saw such training "as an escape from some of the negative aspects of traditional femininity". The female cadets also believed that the ROTC program was "gender-blind" and "gender-neutral". The study claims that female cadets "were hyper-vigilant about their status as women, performing tasks traditionally seen as men's work and often felt that they had to constantly prove they were capable."
The study quoted one female cadet: "in the Navy the joke is that a woman in the Navy is either a bitch, a slut or a lesbian, and none of them are good categories to fall into, and if you are stern with your people then you are a bitch, but if you're a guy and stern people are like, wow, I respect him for being a good leader."
84 percent of cadets said they did not want a military career as it would interfere with marriage and raising children.
A 2009 study examined the attitudes of West Point cadets, Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) cadets, and non-military-affiliated students from civilian colleges toward a variety of military roles. Cadets were less approving of assigning women to certain military jobs than others.
As of 2018, only two women have completed the United States Marine's Infantry Officer Course, while in 2016, 86% of women failed the Marines' combat jobs test.
See also:
Notes:
Further reading:
Bibliography: Fasting, Kari and Trond Svela Sand eds., (2010). "Gender and Military Issues – A Categorized Research Bibliography." Moving Soldiers – Soldaten i bevegelse 01/2010. ISSN 1891-8751. [1]
Sand, Trond Svela and Kari Fasting eds., (2012), "Gender and Military Issues in the Scandinavian Countries – A Categorized Research Bibliography." Moving Soldiers – Soldaten i bevegelse 01/2012. ISSN 1891-8751. [2]
Brownson, Connie (2014). ""Rejecting Patriarchy for Equivalence in the US Military A Response to Anthony King's "Women Warriors: Female Accession to Ground Combat"". Armed Forces & Society. 40 (4): 765–788. doi:10.1177/0095327X14523957. S2CID 145404688.
History: Cook, Bernard, ed, (2006). |
mil_tactics_continued_pretraining.csv | Women in the military | Moving Soldiers – Soldaten i bevegelse 01/2010. ISSN 1891-8751. [1]
Sand, Trond Svela and Kari Fasting eds., (2012), "Gender and Military Issues in the Scandinavian Countries – A Categorized Research Bibliography." Moving Soldiers – Soldaten i bevegelse 01/2012. ISSN 1891-8751. [2]
Brownson, Connie (2014). ""Rejecting Patriarchy for Equivalence in the US Military A Response to Anthony King's "Women Warriors: Female Accession to Ground Combat"". Armed Forces & Society. 40 (4): 765–788. doi:10.1177/0095327X14523957. S2CID 145404688.
History: Cook, Bernard, ed, (2006). Women and War: Historical Encyclopedia from Antiquity to the Present.
Elshtain, Jean Bethke. Women and War (1995)
Elshtain Jean, and Sheila Tobias, eds., Women, Militarism, and War (1990),
Goldman, Nancy Loring ed. (1982). Female Soldiers--Combatants or Noncombatants? Historical and Contemporary Perspectives.
Goldstein, Joshua S. . War and Gender: How Gender Shapes the War System and Vice Versa (2003), psychology perspective
Hacker, Barton C. and Margaret Vining, eds. A Companion to Women's Military History (2012) 625pp; articles by scholars covering a very wide range of topics
Hall, Richard H. Women on the Civil War battlefront (University Press of Kansas 2006).
Lines, Lisa (2011). Milicianas: Women in Combat in the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). Plymouth, UK: Lexington Press. ISBN 978-0-7391-6492-1.
Jones, David. Women Warriors: A History, Brassey's, 1997
Pennington, Reina, (2003). Amazons to Fighter Pilots: A Biographical Dictionary of Military Women.
Salmonson, Jessica Amanda (1991). The Encyclopedia of Amazons: Women Warriors from Antiquity to the Modern Era. Paragon House. ISBN 978-1-55778-420-9.
World War II: Biddiscombe, Perry, (2011). "Into the Maelstrom: German Women in Combat, 1944-45," War & Society (2011), 30#1 pp 61–89
Bidwell, Shelford. The Women's Royal Army Corps (London, 1977) on Britain
Campbell, D'Ann. Women at War with America: Private Lives in a Patriotic Era (Harvard University Press, 1984). on WW2
Campbell, D'Ann. "Servicewomen of World War II", Armed Forces and Society (Win 1990) 16: 251–270. statistical study based on interviews
Campbell, D'Ann. "Women in Combat: The World War Two Experience in the United States, Great Britain, Germany, and the Soviet Union" Journal of Military History (April 1993), 57:301-323. online edition JSTOR 2944060
Cottam, K. Jean Soviet Airwomen in Combat in World War II (Manhattan, KS: Military Affairs/Aerospace Historian Publishing, 1983)
DeGroot G.J. "Whose Finger on the Trigger? Mixed Anti-Aircraft Batteries and the Female Combat Taboo," War in History, Volume 4, Number 4, December 1997, pp. 434–453
Dombrowski, Nicole Ann. Women and War in the Twentieth Century: Enlisted With or Without Consent (1999)
Dominé, Jean-François, (2008). Les femmes au combat; l'arme féminine de la France pendant la Seconde Guerre Mondiale
Hagemann, Karen (2011). "Mobilizing Women for War: The History, Historiography, and Memory of German Women's War Service in the Two World Wars". Journal of Military History. 75 (3): 1055–1093.
Harfield, Alan (2005). "The Women's Auxiliary Corps (India)". Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research. 83 (335): 243–254.
Krylova, Anna, (2010). Soviet Women in Combat: A History of Violence on the Eastern Front.
Morton, Alison. Military or civilians? The curious anomaly of the German Women's Auxiliary Services during the Second World War. 2012. ASIN B007JUR408
Markwick, Roger D. (2008). "A Sacred Duty": Red Army Women Veterans Remembering the Great Fatherland War, 1941–1945," Australian Journal of Politics & History, (2008), 54#3 pp. 403-420.
Maubach, Franka; Satjukow, Silke. (2009). "Zwischen Emanzipation und Trauma: Soldatinnen im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Deutschland, Sowjetunion, USA)" Historische Zeitschrift, (April 2009), Vol. 288 Issue 2, pp 347–384
Merry, Lois K, (2010). Women Military Pilots of World War II: A History with Biographies of American, British, Russian and German Aviators.
Pennington, Reina, (2007). Wings, Women & War: Soviet Airwomen in World War II Combat
Pennington, Reina, (2010). "Offensive Women: Women in Combat in the Red Army in the Second World War" Journal of Military History, July 2010, Vol. 74 Issue 3, p775-820
Pierson, Ruth Roach. (1986). They're Still Women After All: The Second World War and Canadian Womanhood.
McBryde, Brenda. (1985). Quiet Heroines: Story of the Nurses of the Second World War, on British
Sarnecky, Mary T. (1999). A History of the U.S. Army Nurse Corps
Schwarzkopf, Jutta (2009). "Combatant or Non-Combatant? The Ambiguous Status of Women in British Anti-Aircraft Batteries during the Second World War". War & Society. 28 (2): 105–131. doi:10.1179/072924709793054642. S2CID 154973164.
Toman, Cynthia, (2007). An Officer and a Lady: Canadian Military Nursing and the Second World War.
Treadwell, Mattie E. (1954). United States Army in World War II: Special Studies: The Women's Army Corps. the standard history; part of the Army "Green series" online free
Williamson, Gordon, (2003). World War II German Women's Auxiliary Services
Recent: Campbell, D'Ann. (2012) "Almost Integrated? American Servicewomen and Their International Sisters Since World War II" in A Companion to Women's Military History ed by Barton C. Hacker and Margaret Vining pp 291–330
Carreiras, Helena. Gender and the military: women in the armed forces of Western democracies (New York: Routledge, 2006)
Carreiras, Helena and Gerhard Kammel (eds.) Women in the Military and in Armed Conflict (2008) excerpt and text search
Dandeker, Christopher, and Mady Wechsler Segal. "Gender integration in armed forces: recent policy developments in the United Kingdom" Armed Forces & Society 23#1 (Fall 1996): 29–47.
Eulriet, Irène. Women and the military in Europe: comparing public cultures (New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 2009)
Frampton, James Scott The Influence of Attitudes and Morale on the Performance of Active-Duty United States Marine Corps Female Security Guards (2011)
Frank, Nathaniel et al. eds. Gays in foreign militaries 2010: A global primer (Santa Barbara, CA: Palm Center, 2010)
Garcia, Sarah (1999). "Military women in the NATO armed forces". Minerva: Quarterly Report on Women and the Military. 17 (2): 33–82.
Gill, Ritu; Febbraro, Angela R. (2013). "Experiences and perceptions of sexual harassment in the Canadian Forces Combat Arms". Violence Against Women. 19 (2): 269–287. doi:10.1177/1077801213478140. PMID 23443902. S2CID 206667947.
Goldman, Nancy. "The Changing Role of Women in the Armed Forces." American Journal of Sociology 1973 78(4): 892–911. |
mil_tactics_continued_pretraining.csv | Women in the military | eds. Gays in foreign militaries 2010: A global primer (Santa Barbara, CA: Palm Center, 2010)
Garcia, Sarah (1999). "Military women in the NATO armed forces". Minerva: Quarterly Report on Women and the Military. 17 (2): 33–82.
Gill, Ritu; Febbraro, Angela R. (2013). "Experiences and perceptions of sexual harassment in the Canadian Forces Combat Arms". Violence Against Women. 19 (2): 269–287. doi:10.1177/1077801213478140. PMID 23443902. S2CID 206667947.
Goldman, Nancy. "The Changing Role of Women in the Armed Forces." American Journal of Sociology 1973 78(4): 892–911. ISSN 0002-9602 JSTOR 2776610
Herbert, Melissa S. Camouflage Isn't Only for Combat: Gender, Sexuality, and Women in the Military (New York U. Press, 1998)
Holm, Jeanne M. (1993). Women in the Military: An Unfinished Revolution.; women from the United States
Lemmon, Gayle Tzemach. Ashley's War: The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield (HarperCollins, 2015) American women
Skaine, Rosemarie. Women at War: Gender Issues of Americans in Combat. McFarland, 1999.
United States Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women. (1993) Report on the Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women
Middle East: Holmstedt, Kirsten. Band of Sisters: American Women at War in Iraq (2007) excerpt and text search
Holmstedt, Kirsten. "The Girls Come Marching Home"
Wise, James E. and Scott Baron. Women at War: Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Conflicts (2006)
Gayle Tzemach Lemmon (2021). The Daughters of Kobani: A Story of Rebellion, Courage, and Justice. Penguin Press. ISBN 978-0525560685.
Social science studies: Archer, Emerald M (2013). "The Power of Gendered Stereotypes in the US Marine Corps". Armed Forces & Society. 39 (2): 359–391. doi:10.1177/0095327x12446924. S2CID 146506368.
Booth, Bradford (2003). "Contextual Effects of Military Presence on Women's Earnings". Armed Forces & Society. 30: 25–51. doi:10.1177/0095327x0303000102. S2CID 153497544.
Byers, Andrew (2019-05-15). The Sexual Economy of War: Discipline and Desire in the U.S. Army. Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-1-5017-3645-2.
Cooney; et al. (2003). "Racial Differences in the Impact of Military Service on the Socioeconomic Status of Women Veterans". Armed Forces & Society. 30: 53–85. doi:10.1177/0095327x0303000103. S2CID 143082671.
Dar, Yechezkel; Kimhi, Shaul (2004). "Youth in the Military: Gendered Experiences in the Conscript Service in the Israeli Army". Armed Forces & Society. 30 (3): 433–459. doi:10.1177/0095327x0403000306. S2CID 143743778.
Iskra, Darlene (2007). "Attitudes toward Expanding Roles for Navy Women at Sea: Results of a Content Analysis". Armed Forces & Society. 33 (2): 203–223. doi:10.1177/0095327x06287883. S2CID 145096104.
Mitchell, Brian. 1998. Women in the Military: Flirting with Disaster. Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing. xvii, 390 ISBN 0-89526-376-9
Moore, Brenda (1991). "African American Women in the U.S. Military". Armed Forces & Society. 17 (3): 363–384. doi:10.1177/0095327x9101700303. S2CID 143452220.
External links: Media related to Women in the military at Wikimedia Commons |
mil_tactics_continued_pretraining.csv | Women in war | History: History of women in the military
Uprisings led by women
Women in warfare and the military in the ancient era
Women in warfare and the military in the medieval era
Women in the Crusades
Roles of women, children, and class
Women in warfare and the military in the early modern era
Timeline of women in early modern warfare
Women in warfare and the military (1750–1799)
Women in the American Revolution
Women in the French Revolution
Women in the Haitian Revolution
Women in warfare and the military in the 19th century
List of female American Civil War soldiers
Timeline of women in 19th century warfare
Women in warfare and the military (1900–1939)
Women in warfare and the military (1900–1945)
Women in warfare and the military (1945–1999)
World War I: Women's roles in the World Wars
Women in the World War I
Home front during World War I
Australian women during World War I
Belgium in World War I
British home front during the First World War
Canadian women during the World Wars
History of Germany during World War I
Women in the Russian Revolution
United States home front during World War I
Interwar period: Women in the Spanish Civil War
World War II: Women's roles in the World Wars
Code Girls
Home front during World War II
Housewives' demonstrations – Women protest poverty and rationing in WW2 FrancePages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets
United States home front during World War II
Canadian women during the World Wars
Soviet women in World War II
Sexual violence during the Holocaust
Cold War: Women in the North Korean Revolution
Women in the Cuban Revolution
Women in the Algerian War
Women in the Vietnam War
Role of women in the Nicaraguan Revolution
Women in the Soviet–Afghan War
Women in the Iran–Iraq War
21st century conflicts: Women in the war in Donbas (2014–2022)
Women in the Russian invasion of Ukraine
Women in the 2023 Israel–Hamas war
Contemporary: Women in the military by country
Women in the military in the Americas
Women in the military in Europe
Women in warfare and the military (2000–present)
Women in combat
Women in the military
See also: Gender in security studies
Wartime cross-dressing
List of wartime cross-dressers
Timeline of women in warfare in the United States from 1900 to 1949
Timeline of women in war in the United States, Pre-1945
Timeline of women in warfare in the United States from 1950 to 1999
Timeline of women in warfare and the military in the United States, 2000–2010
Timeline of women in warfare and the military in the United States from 2011–present
Women in the decolonisation of Africa
Notes:
Further reading: Clarke, R.D., 2022. Women and/in War. In: Kurtz, L.R. (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace, and Conflict, vol. 2. Elsevier, Academic Press, pp. 332–343. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-820195-4.00114-X.
Cook, Bernard, ed. Women and War: Historical Encyclopedia from Antiquity to the Present (2006).
Elshtain, Jean Bethke. Women and War (1995)
Elshtain Jean, and Sheila Tobias, eds. Women, Militarism, and War (1990)
Hacker, Barton C. and Margaret Vining, eds. A Companion to Women's Military History (Brill, 2012), 625pp; 16 long essays by leading scholars stretching from the Ancient to the contemporary world
Jones, David. Women Warriors: A History (Brassey's, 1997)
Pennington, Reina. Amazons to Fighter Pilots: A Biographical Dictionary of Military Women (2003).
Salmonson, Jessica Amanda. The Encyclopedia of Amazons: Women Warriors from Antiquity to the Modern Era (1991). |
mil_tactics_continued_pretraining.csv | World war | Etymology: The Oxford English Dictionary cited the first known usage in the English language to a Scottish newspaper, The People's Journal, in 1848: "A war among the great powers is now necessarily a world-war." The term "world war" is used by Karl Marx and his associate, Friedrich Engels, in a series of articles published around 1850 called The Class Struggles in France. Rasmus B. Anderson in 1889 described an episode in Teutonic mythology as a "world war" (Swedish: världskrig), justifying this description by a line in an Old Norse epic poem, "Völuspá: folcvig fyrst I heimi" ("The first great war in the world"). German writer August Wilhelm Otto Niemann used the term "world war" in the title of his anti-British novel, Der Weltkrieg: Deutsche Träume (The World War: German Dreams) in 1904, published in English as The Coming Conquest of England.
The term "first world war" was first used in September 1914 by German biologist and philosopher Ernst Haeckel, who claimed that "there is no doubt that the course and character of the feared 'European War' ... will become the first world war in the full sense of the word", citing a wire service report in the Indianapolis Star on 20 September 1914. In English, the term "First World War" had been used by Lieutenant Colonel Charles à Court Repington, as a title for his memoirs (published in 1920); he had noted his discussion on the matter with a Major Johnstone of Harvard University in his diary entry of September 10, 1918.
The term "World War I" was coined by Time magazine on page 28 of its June 12, 1939, issue. In the same article, on page 32, the term "World War II" was first used speculatively to describe the upcoming war. The first use for the actual war came in its issue of September 11, 1939. One week earlier, on September 4, the day after France and the United Kingdom declared war on Germany, the Danish newspaper Kristeligt Dagblad used the term on its front page, saying "The Second World War broke out yesterday at 11 a.m."
Speculative fiction authors had been noting the concept of a Second World War in 1919 and 1920, when Milo Hastings wrote his dystopian novel, City of Endless Night.
Other languages have also adopted the "world war" terminology; for example, in French, "world war" is translated as guerre mondiale; in German, Weltkrieg (which, prior to the war, had been used in the more abstract meaning of a global conflict); in Italian, guerra mondiale; in Spanish and Portuguese, guerra mundial; in Danish and Norwegian, verdenskrig; in Russian, мировая война (mirovaya voyna); and in Finnish, maailmansota.
History:
First World War: The First World War occurred from 1914 to 1918. In terms of human technological history, the scale of World War I was enabled by the technological advances of the Second Industrial Revolution and the resulting globalization that allowed global power projection and mass production of military hardware. It had been recognized that the complex system of opposing military alliances (the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires against the British, Italian, Russian, and French Empires) was likely, if war broke out, to lead to a worldwide conflict. That caused a very minute conflict between two countries to have the potential to set off a domino effect of alliances, triggering a world war. The fact that the powers involved had large overseas empires virtually guaranteed that such a war would be worldwide, as the colonies' resources would be a crucial strategic factor. The same strategic considerations also ensured that the combatants would strike at each other's colonies, thus spreading the wars far more widely than those of pre-Columbian times.
War crimes were perpetrated in World War I. Chemical weapons were used in the war despite the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 having outlawed the use of such weapons in warfare. The Ottoman Empire was responsible for the Armenian genocide, during the First World War, as well as other war crimes.
Second World War: The Second World War occurred from 1939 to 1945 and is the only conflict in which nuclear weapons have been used; both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in the Japanese Empire, were devastated by atomic bombs dropped by the United States. Nazi Germany, led by Adolf Hitler, was responsible for genocides, most notably the Holocaust, which murdered demographics considered Untermensch by the Nazis. These included about six million Jews and about five million others, such as Slavs, Roma, homosexuals, and the physically and mentally disabled. The United States, the Soviet Union, and Canada deported and interned minority groups within their own borders and, largely because of the conflict, many ethnic Germans were later expelled from Eastern Europe. Japan was responsible for attacking neutral nations without a declaration of war, such as the attack on Pearl Harbor. It is also known for its brutal treatment and killing of Allied prisoners of war and the inhabitants of Asia. It also used Asians as forced laborers and was responsible for the Nanjing Massacre in which 250,000 civilians were brutally murdered by Japanese troops. Noncombatants suffered at least as badly as or worse than combatants, and the distinction between combatants and noncombatants was often blurred by the belligerents of total war in both conflicts.
The outcome of the war had a profound effect on the course of world history. The old European empires collapsed or they were dismantled as a direct result of the crushing costs of the war and in some cases, their fall was caused by the defeat of imperial powers. The United States became firmly established as the dominant global superpower, along with its close competitor and ideological foe, the Soviet Union. The two superpowers exerted political influence over most of the world's nation-states for decades after the end of the Second World War. The modern international security, economic, and diplomatic system was created in the aftermath of the war.
Institutions such as the United Nations were established to collectivize international affairs, with the explicit goal of preventing another outbreak of general war. The wars had also greatly changed the course of daily life. Technologies developed during wartime had a profound effect on peacetime life as well, such as by advances in jet aircraft, penicillin, nuclear energy, and electronic computers.
Potential third world war: Since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the Second World War, there has been a widespread and prolonged fear of a potential third world war between nuclear-armed powers. It is often suggested that it would become a nuclear war, and be more devastating and violent than both the First and Second World Wars. Albert Einstein is often quoted as having said in 1947 that "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." It has been anticipated and planned for by military and civil authorities, and it has also been explored in fiction. Scenarios have ranged from conventional warfare to limited or total nuclear warfare.
Various former government officials, politicians, authors, and military leaders (including James Woolsey, Alexandre de Marenches, Eliot Cohen, and Subcomandante Marcos) have attempted to apply the labels of the "Third World War" and the "Fourth World War" to various past and present global wars since the end of the Second World War, such as the Cold War and the war on terror respectively.
During the early 21st century, the war in Afghanistan (2001–2021), the Arab Spring (2010–2012), the Syrian civil war (2011–present), the Iraq War (2003–2011), the Russo-Ukrainian War (2014–present), the Yemeni civil war (2014–present), and their worldwide spillovers are sometimes described as proxy wars waged by the United States and Russia, which led some commentators to characterize the situation as a "proto-world war", with many countries embroiled in overlapping conflicts.
Other global conflicts: The Seven Years' War (1754/56–1763) was fought across all of North America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America. Most of the great powers of the era participated, notably including the British Empire and French Empire, but polities from many continents played important roles. Some historians call it "World War Zero" as a result.
Historians like Richard F. Hamilton and Holger H. Herwig created a list of eight world wars, including the two generally agreed-upon world wars, the Seven Years' War, and five others: the Nine Years' War (1689–1697), the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714), the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748), the French Revolutionary Wars (1792–1802), and the Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815). British historian John Robert Seeley dubbed all of those wars between France and Great Britain (later the UK) between 1689 and 1815 (including the American Revolutionary War from 1775 to 1783) as the Second Hundred Years' War, echoing an earlier period of conflict between France and England known as the Hundred Years' War (1337–1453). Some writers have referred to the American Revolutionary War alone as a world war. |
mil_tactics_continued_pretraining.csv | World war | Historians like Richard F. Hamilton and Holger H. Herwig created a list of eight world wars, including the two generally agreed-upon world wars, the Seven Years' War, and five others: the Nine Years' War (1689–1697), the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714), the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748), the French Revolutionary Wars (1792–1802), and the Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815). British historian John Robert Seeley dubbed all of those wars between France and Great Britain (later the UK) between 1689 and 1815 (including the American Revolutionary War from 1775 to 1783) as the Second Hundred Years' War, echoing an earlier period of conflict between France and England known as the Hundred Years' War (1337–1453). Some writers have referred to the American Revolutionary War alone as a world war. Others (like William R. Thompson or Chase-Dunn and Sokolovsky) also wants to include the Italian Wars and Dutch wars [Dutch-Spanish and Anglo-Dutch Wars] as part of Global Wars, while clasificating WW1 and WW2 as the Global German Wars, and the Coalition Wars with Wars of Louis XIV as the 2nd and 1st Global French Wars. However, other historians prefer to see all of those conflicts as "Hegemonic Wars" or "General Wars", been inter-regional wars on the grand scale, but not worldly.
Other historians suggest even earlier conflicts to be world wars. For example, Russian ethnologist L. N. Gumilyov called the Byzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628 "the World War of the 7th century" because it evolved into a war between the fourfold alliance of the Chinese Empire, the Western Turkic Khaganate, the Khazars, and the Byzantine Empire against a triple union of the Sasanian Empire, the Avars, and the Eastern Turkic Khaganate, with proxy conflicts in Afro-Eurasia (like the Aksumite–Persian wars) and across the Old World.
Others consider that the Ottoman–Portuguese confrontations and Ottoman–Habsburg wars can be considered as world conflicts, prototypes of the "Great Game" in Eurasia and the Scramble for Africa, but between two main power-projecting and religious blocs, that being the Ottomans, as holders of the Muslim Caliph title, and the Habsburgs, as emperors of Christendom. Also has been argued that a Catholic-Muslim Global War hadn't started with the clash between Charles V and Suleiman the Magnificent aspirations of Universal powers, but before withe the Spanish-Ottoman Conflicts in late Reconquista, due to Catholic Monarchs of Spain's attempt to attack Turks and Mamluks (supporters of Emirate of Granada) in Asia from the East Indies, while also attacking them in Mediterranean Europe and North Africa (aspiring to lead a Global Crusade at the end, that started their grandson).
However, the Americas and Oceania were not involved in those conflicts, in which case, other historians consider the Thirty Years' War and Eighty Years' War (specially Iberian–Dutch War) as the first global conflict, pitting the Spanish and Portuguese Empires against the French, Dutch, and British Empires and their allies (mostly Protestants, like Danish and Swedish oversea expeditions) across the five continents.
Another possible example is the Second Congo War (1998–2003) even though it was only waged on one continent. It involved nine nations and led to ongoing low-intensity warfare despite an official peace and the first democratic elections in 2006. It has been referred to as "Africa's World War".
See also: Interwar period
List of largest empires
List of military conflicts spanning multiple wars
List of ongoing armed conflicts
Military history
References:
Bibliography: Shapiro, Fred R.; Epstein, Joseph (2006). The Yale Book of Quotations. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-10798-2.
Willmott, H. P. (2003). World War I. Dorling Kindersley. ISBN 978-0-7894-9627-0. OCLC 52541937.
External links: This is the Fourth World War, an interview with philosopher Jean Baudrillard |