I doubt a handful of G-50s would’ve resulted in easy victory for Finns. The Finnish ground forces did spectacularly well in Winter War without air superiority anyhow.

And I didn’t ignore Stalin – Finland was in between a rock and a hard place.

But your contention that they were not the aggressors in 1941 is incorrect (but then the Soviets were aggressors in 1939).

First of all as obsolete as FIAT G.50 may look today in 1939-1940 this engineer Gabrielli’s design was outstanding. It was obsolete in 1943 when it was no longer allowed to cross the east border.

The kill ratio with the few G.50s we had was 44/1…better than any other FAF inventory aeroplane..just the amounts werent very large. In Winter War especially it would have made a lot easier to sustain air superiority..Fokker D.XXIs were obsolete and yet they scored some too.

Without a doubt USSR considered the German troops a threat in Finland…and since they had no conceptual understanding how our democracy worked they attacked…making them an attacker which infuriated the people and public opinion here. This developement was partially due to the Hitlers speech…of being in alliance with Finland ( even there was no alliance ). He lied like he always did ( at least no document of such alliance has been found ).

Our long time president Urho Kekkonen called the finnish actions in WW II era as drifting tree theory. Meaning we really weren’t much able to help where the log was going to end up. Hitler was going to try to beat Stalin and he did everything in his viewpoint was necessary. I think many here considered both mad men…Stalin and Hitler ( so rock and a hard place is correct ).

We are discussing Finland’s participation in Continuation War aren’t we, not pre-1941 German-Soviet machinations?

Whatever the case, the Finns threw their lot in with Germany. By 1944 you had German formations fighting the Soviets on Finnish soil (including 122 Infanterie Division, a StuG Abteilung and a Luftwaffe air group (Luftflotte 1 and 5)

EDIT: Oh and a joint Finnish-German naval detachment on Lake Lagoda.

The Finns allowed Germans to use their airbases prior to Barbarossa – recce elements of Luftflotte I were deployed to Finland on 20/06/41 (remembering Operation Barbarossa started 22/06/41). On 22/06/41 Luftwaffe starterd to deploy bomber aircraft in Finland.

I doubt a handful of G-50s would’ve resulted in easy victory for Finns. The Finnish ground forces did spectacularly well in Winter War without air superiority anyhow.

And I didn’t ignore Stalin – Finland was in between a rock and a hard place.

But your contention that they were not the aggressors in 1941 is incorrect (but then the Soviets were aggressors in 1939).

We certainly would have liked to live peacefully all throughout 1939-1945. We have Winter War 1939-1940 and a Continuation War 1941-1944 + Lapland War 1944-1945 ( First german was shoot here in Oulu while driwing a 2 seater motorcycle after the time had expired for germans to leave the city )…and we saw only way to stay independent to let Germany protect us while they attacked USSR. Also Ernst Heinkels memoirs tell that the East Campaign was sold to the nation ( and whole world ) as a 2 weeks lightning war ! I don’t think our chief Mannerheim who had been commanding imperial troops in Russia really underestimated USSR. They tought they can navigate better in this kinda weather ( that was to come in 1941 ).