14. The Winter War embarrassed the Soviet leadership and encouraged Adolf Hitler
In November 1940, just weeks after joining the Germans in dividing conquered Poland, where they had encountered little resistance, Soviet troops invaded Finland, intent on seizing Finnish territory which included a large percentage of their industrial base. The action led to the Soviet expulsion from the League of Nations. Expecting an easy conquest, they instead ran into spirited Finnish resistance. Soviet military leadership was largely inept, the troops in the field performed poorly and the Finns, in a fighting withdrawal, inflicted heavy casualties on the invaders. The Finns, though suffered a defeat which led to the loss of just more than 10% of their territory when the war ended by the Moscow Peace Treaty in March 1940. It was a humiliating victory for the Soviets.
The vaunted Red Army had been embarrassed by the much smaller Finnish military, and the Finnish ski troops became heroic in the eyes of the Free World. The much smaller and poorly equipped Finnish Air Force shot down over 200 Soviet airplanes against losses of 62 aircraft. The poor performance of the Soviet military was noted by the German High Command, and influenced Hitler’s decisions in the planning for the upcoming invasion of the Soviet Union, Operation Barbarossa. When that attack did get underway, the Finns launched the Continuation War to regain the territory lost to Stalin in 1940, receiving support from Germany, though Finland never officially allied itself with Germany by joining the Tripartite Pact and formally entering the Axis.