Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests/Winter War

Winter War

 * This is the archived discussion of the TFAR nomination for the article below. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article/requests). Please do not modify this page. 

The result was: scheduled for Today's featured article/March 13, 2018 by Wehwalt (talk) 20:38, 11 February 2018 (UTC)



The Winter War (30 November 1939 – 13 March 1940) began when the Soviet Union (USSR) invaded Finland three months after the outbreak of World War II. The USSR sought to annex Finnish territory, primarily claiming to protect Leningrad, 32 km (20 mi) from the border. Finland refused and the USSR attacked with more than two times as many soldiers, thirty times as many aircraft, and a hundred times as many tanks as the defending forces. The Red Army had been crippled by Joseph Stalin's Great Purge and the Finnish Defence Forces repelled the invasion in temperatures down to −43 °C (−45 °F) for much longer than expected. A reorganized Soviet offensive broke through in February 1940 and forced the Finns to seek peace. Finland ceded territory representing 11 percent of its land and 13 percent of its economy, but retained sovereignty. Soviet casualties have been estimated around 321,000–381,000 in contrast to the Finnish casualties of 70,000. The poor performance of the Red Army encouraged Adolf Hitler that an attack on the USSR would be successful. After 15 months of interim peace, the Continuation War and Operation Barbarossa began in June 1941.


 * Most recent similar article(s): Battle of Hastings 14 Oct 2017, Battle of Winterthur 27 Nov 2017, Australian Defence Force 26 Jan 2018, Finnish Civil War 27 Jan 2018
 * Main editors:
 * Promoted: 19 Jan 2018
 * Reasons for nomination: 78th ending anniversary, first personal FA and on-going 100th year of Finnish independence
 * Support as nominator. Manelolo (talk) 00:37, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Support: a little-known but interesting piece of military history. Praemonitus (talk) 21:43, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Also support. While there is a more recent military campaign article than the ones mentioned above (the Guadalcanal Campaign article going live in 10 minutes), there is still a month before this article appears.  This article on the Finnish war is very well done, and this relatively-unknown war raises an interesting question:  How would the war had developed if the British were able to send resources to the Finns, especially after the Germans attacked the Soviets?  Kablammo (talk) 23:50, 6 February 2018 (UTC)