It's well into the northern European winter season. At the end of nineteen thirty
nine, five hundred thousand Russian Soviet soldiers are making a collective push northwards,
swarming the Finnish countryside as they go. They are armed to the hilt with
tanks, explosives, machine guns, grenades, and a staggeringly overwhelming number of
troops. But there's one thing they didn't count on, one thing that threatened
to derail their entire military offensive altogether. That one thing was the humble sausage.
These are the bizarre but true stories from history that in some way involved
food. I'm Nick Charlie Key, and this is the fantastic history of food.
I wanted to say, yet again a huge thank you to all of
my supporters on Patreon. You help me out immensely in getting this show made,
and today I wanted to send a special shout out to two people who
have started supporting me since the last episode. The first is Josh Lovertire and
the second is Zachary Headen. Josh and Zachary, thank you so much.
I really do appreciate your support. If you would like to support the show
in the same way as these two amazing people have. It costs just two
dollars a month and when you sign up you'll have your name mentioned in an
episode, just like you've heard today. And as always, this is absolutely
pressure free. More than anything, I just love that you're listening to the
show getting some enjoyment out of the podcast, and that is the reason why
I keep doing what I'm doing. Now back to the episode. It was
the first year of World War Two, but the Soviet Army wasn't heading towards
conflict with the military might of the Nazis. No. In fact, they
were rushing headlong towards a target they believed they could crush with ease, their
tiny neighbor on the Baltic Sea Finland. The Finnish Army, with nowhere near
the might or means of their Soviet counterparts, is not an army that has
ever been willing to go down quietly. It was an overwhelming set of circumstances
for them, being outnumbered, out gunned, and worst of all, completely
taken by surprise, but they gathered to fight. Nonetheless, not Joseph Stalin
was using the distraction caused by Adolf Hitler's Third Reich in Europe to try and
sneakily assert control around his region, attempting to storm the surrounding countries to claim
them as his own. You see, Finland had in fact once been Russian
territory that they had spent many years fighting against Russian rule and refusing to assimilate
into the Russian culture. And while Russia was struggling with the chaos that was
their transition to a socialist society, in nineteen seventeen, Finland took the gap
to secede. Stalin had always resented Finland for this act of treachery, viewing
it as an unforgivable diminishment of the Great Russian Empire, and now he was
determined to tip the scales back into the soviets favour. In some behind closed
doors meetings, the Soviet Union in Nazi Germany had secretly agreed to leave each
other alone and promised not to interfere with one another's ambitions to occupy and assimilate
their neighbours. It was an important truce to have, as both sides were
capable of formidable firepower, but not having to worry about the other one allowed
them each to turn their attentions to their respective ambitions while not every truce or
treaty that was signed ended up being honored, however, as just seven years
prior to this, Russia and Finland had themselves signed a non AGGRESSI packed.
Stalin didn't take long to renege on his promises, though, and soon afterwards
began publicly demanding that Finland give the land back to Russia. Not long after,
September nineteen thirty nine rolled around, and Hitler would order his troops into
Poland in an invasion that would be the catalyst for World War II. The
eyes of the world swiveled towards Northern Europe and the Nazi war machine, and
this diversion provided Stalin with the perfect opportunity. Just two months after Hitler's invasion
of Poland, Stalin ordered his Soviet forces to bomb Helsinki, the southern capital
of Finland and by far its most populous city. Countries across the globe were
outraged, but as was the plan all along, they had bigger fish to
fry. At this current moment, there also seemed to be no hope for
the poor Finnish forces, as they were outnumbered three to one by the oncoming
Soviet war machine. Analysts predicted this conflict would be over in a matter of
weeks. What they didn't count on high, however, was the effect of
Stalin's purge of the Red Army. In the two years leading up to this,
the outwardly projected image of the Soviet forces was one of awesome and terrifying
power, but internally they were crumbling as their leadership structures had been decimated.
Between nineteen thirty seven and nineteen thirty nine, the Great Purge had taken its
toll. Thirty thousand high ranking officers had been either discharged, arrested, or
killed as a way for Stalin to consolidate his power, replacing them all with
people loyal to him. And while this was considered a good decision internally to
not have the military oppose his leadership, the very real effects on the ground
meant that the army was now filled with inexperienced officers who deferred a lot of
their military decision making to government bureaucrats who had little to know military experience of
their own. As I'm sure you can all imagine, this had a disastrous
effect on not only troop morale, but on any sort of tactical cohesion on
the battlefield, and this back for royally in the Soviet's faces. Many of
the units that were sent to Finland to fight had come from Russia's warmer regions
and had never received any sort of winter combat training. Compounding this issue was
the frankly ludicrous decision to then also ration these soldiers food allocations, meaning they
were trying to fight a winter war with troops who were tactically unprepared, woefully
under resource with weapons, and who were constantly cold, tired, and hungry.
In contrast, however, the Finnish troops who had been forged in this
icy climate made sure they stayed warmly dressed and well fed. Nevertheless, the
Red Army pushed on despite their rumbling stomachs. The Finnish military command had been
sending out small raiding parties on cross country skis at night to surround encamped Soviet
positions, open fire upon them briefly, and then ski away into the night.
They hoped that by doing this the Soviets would never be able to fully
settle down and would constantly live in fear of another raid. One night,
this particular tactic worked even better than Finnish command could have imagined. On this
night, the raiding ski patrol fired upon one of the Soviet positions before retreating
and then attacking another nearby Soviet camp. In their confusion, the two Soviet
camps both ran towards each other's gun fire and began attacking each other in the
dark, thinking they were fighting a Finnish raiding force. After this embarrassing blunder,
and fearful of more raids, they began doubling the guard duties, meaning
their soldiers quickly became exhausted with little means of replenishing their lost energy. Coupled
with this, their rapid advance into the Finnished countryside meant that their supply lines
had been stretched to the limits, with only black bread and frozen dried meat
to sustain them. So on the night of the tenth of December, the
seven hundred and eighteenth Rifle Regiment, one of the groups of soldiers affected by
these raids, managed to swing around behind the Finnish army and crept up slowly
on a very lightly defended Fanish supply station at Varilampe Pond. The Soviets should
have annihilated them in a matter of hours, but despite the element of surprise
and even their superior numbers, there was one thing they had encountered on that
would derail their entire operation. The finished artillery and supply troops, not expecting
to be ambushed at this very moment, had hunkered down inside their thick canvas
tents and were making themselves comfortable, well as comfortable as camping in snow could
ever rarely be. They had a few roaring fires going that served the dual
purpose of not only keeping them warm, but also as a means to cook
their hearty winter meals on and at this very moment, the Soviet soldiers were
planning their attack just outside of the finished night watchmen's view, while the soldiers
inside the tents were in the middle of cooking up a delicious sausage stew.
The giant pots were thick with vegetables, meat, and fatty offcuts, and
the smells that emanated were almost cartoonish upon the wind. Now it's worth explaining
at this point the relationship that Finland had as with good sausages. They are
a self described sausage nation, and on average, each finn eats almost three
kilograms of sausage each year. In Finland, they have their very own national
sausage named makera. It is similar to a German bok verst and most commonly
consists of finely ground pork, amongst other traditional ingredients. In Finland, it's
not uncommon to find entire aisles in the supermarkets dedicated to variations of this delicious
national sausage, especially in the summer time, when outdoor grilling means an even
larger variety. Their popularity undeniably stems from a sense of cultural importance, but
practically they are also a popular choice due to their relative cheapness, long shelf
life, and the fact that they can be added to so many different dishes.
Sausage, casseroles, soups and pustas are all common dishes in households around
the world, and even more so in Finland. So it's no surprise then
that this national love of sausage would extend even to the military. Its ubiquitous
availability and the ability to add it to a large stew full of potatoes,
onions and carrots made it a meal that was not just cost effective and protein
rich, but also incredibly simple to produce. Now with that vivid image in
your minds, you can now imagine the glee with which these finished soldiers stirred
their pots, knowing that shortly they would be consuming their very favorite meal.
All of a sudden, a battle cry sounded from the darkness as the Soviet
soldiers rushed to attack the finished camp. The Finns, realizing what was happening,
grabbed their overcoats and weapons and scattered into the surrounding fields and forests while
fighting off some pursuing Soviet troops. Then all of a sudden, everything went
quiet. They realized the Soviets were no longer chasing them and they had been
allowed to escape. This made no sense to them, as their camp was
not a fortified position that itself would have been the target of the attack until
soon they realized what was happening. One of the finished troops managed to sneak
close enough back to the camp to find out why the attack had suddenly stopped,
and what he saw before him was almost incomprehensible. The Soviet soldiers,
who had been on an enforced non stop march for the last five days,
had stopped midway through their attack as soon as the smells from the simmering sausage
stew had hit their nostrils. For so long they had been underfed to the
point of near starvation that when their brains registered the quantities of hot, delicious
food in front of them in that moment, nothing else mattered. They dropped
their weapons and grabbed whatever they could and started scooping up the hot, delicious
stew, gorging themselves after weeks of inedible slop. Some soldiers didn't even bother
to look for plates or balls and simply used their helmets to scoop up their
portions. Tragically for them, it would end up being their very last meal.
During this sudden and extended pause in fighting, the Finnish troops had managed
to regroup under the command of the Finnish officer Major Pejari. He had listed
soldiers from the nearby sixteenth Infantry Regiment, along with the field cooks and medics,
and surrounded what had up until very recently been their own camp. Major
Pejari silently signaled for them all to fix their bayonets to the ends of their
rifles, as he knew this upcoming skirmish would involve a large amount of close
quart of fighting inside many of the tents. With another loud battle cry,
the tables had been spectacularly turned as the Finns now rushed the Soviets in their
very own surprise attack. Historian William Trotter describes what happened next simply as a
blood bath. It was one of the very few times that proper bayonet fighting
was recorded in the Winter Wars, and the resulting skirmish was brutal and without
mercy. Soldiers on both sides locked themselves in gruesome hand to hand combat,
but the weakened Soviet troops, now too full to move properly, never stood
a chance. Their entire battalion was routed with ease, and only a handful
of Russian soldiers made it out alive. This battle served as a stark reminder
of just how disorganized the Soviet army was, but even so, their seemingly
never ending numbers would wear down their opposition eventually in a war of Puiatrician Despite
this Finnish victory at Varra lampsy Pond, it took the Soviets just one hundred
and five days to completely overwhelm the opposition into surrendering. Finland ceded their territory
back to the Soviet Union. But this particular offensive had some potentially history changing
consequences. Adolf Hitler had been paying close attention to the Russian invasion of Finland
and had been more than adequately briefed on their lack of leadership and general military
ineptitude. It was this simple fact that ultimately persuaded him to split his forces
from simply steam rolling his way through Europe to declaring his own war against Russia,
meaning that they had to now fight on two fronts, ultimately decimating his
forces in the process. It was not long, however, before his own
troops learned the harsh realities of fighting in a winter war unprepared and underresourced.
There are countless stories from countless wars of food and drink playing a pivotal role
in the outcomes of certain battles, and I'm sure we'll touch on those in
future episodes, but for now, I think it's worth being somewhat grateful that
as you settle in this evening to eat whatever delicious meal you've prepared, you
don't have to worry about a horde of angry, finished soldiers brandishing sharpened bayonets
rushing at you from out of the darkness. This show is made entirely by
me, Nick Charlie Key, with our theme music having been made by the
enigma that is the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. If you'd like to support the show,
the simplest way to do that is over on our Patreon account. There's
just one option, so for just two bucks a month, you'll help me
keep producing this show, and in return, you'll get your name forever etched
onto our supporter's Wall of Fame over on our website and then maybe listen out
for your name in an upcoming episode. So until next time, bon appetite.