9 June 1928, Southeastern Finland, Mannerheim Line.

Compared to the Sokolov Line in southwestern Russia, this line of defense of only 105 kilometers is not only incomparable in scale, but it also takes far less time and manpower and material resources, but it is famous because this line of defense near the Russian-Finnish border holds an important passage from Russia to the heart of Finland, and it is only 55 kilometers from the Russian capital St. Petersburg!

Since the independence of the former Grand Duchy of Finland in 1914, the Russian rulers have all regarded this small Nordic country that has a huge potential threat to their capital and guards the export of the Gulf of Finland as a thorn in the side, but Finland's independence has been strongly supported by Germany, and Aglini's Tsarist Russia is very dependent on German funds and weapons support, even at the beginning of the reign of Empress Diana I, who adopted an iron-blooded policy, the Tsarist Russian government did not dare to annoy this military empire that is booming. The reconquest of Finland became an empty goal.

With the support of the powerful German Empire, the Finns continued to pay tribute to Germany while living a small life, although the Finnish Army was under the command of the talented and ambitious General Mannerheim, but it only maintained a size of less than 100,000 people, and most of the equipment including military uniforms were imported from Germany, and the soldiers received military salaries were all Euromarks, so it was not until the beginning of 1928 when Germany asked for the signing of the German-Finnish Offensive and Defensive Alliance Treaty that the Finns felt that war was coming. However, they were unwilling to allow German soldiers to defend their country, so they began to build fortifications along the Karelian Isthmus. It only took a little more than two months, but fortunately, the total length of this line was only 105 kilometers, and the main body of the defense line had been completed by the time of the German-Russian war, and about 110,000 people were stationed in six Finnish infantry divisions.

On June 4, the war began in a very ceremonial way, with the Kaiser personally reading the edict of declaration of war to the entire German people, followed by Finland and other countries declaring war on Russia. A large number of German fighters stationed in Finland could not wait to cross the border and attack important Russian targets, seizing air supremacy in the Russian capital area in one afternoon. Watch as these silver-gray warhawks frequently fly overhead. At first, the Finnish officers and soldiers thought that the war should soon end with the victory of the Germans, and that they would reap the fruits of victory by waiting quietly in this defensive line, but the good intentions soon ended with the fall of Russian shells. Although the Germans held air supremacy, and although there were more than 2,000 German aircraft stationed in Finland, they could not be used as the only factor in the war to determine victory or defeat. On the night of June 5, Russian troops crossed the Russian-Finnish border and launched their first offensive on the Finnish Mannerheim Line a few hours later.

The Carrelia region is located close to Lake Ladoga, and the marshy and forested terrain is conducive to defense. Coupled with the permanent and field offensive that the Finns had been building for more than two months, the Russian army did not make significant progress in the first few days of the night offensive, but instead lost thousands of officers and soldiers. At the same time, the German army maintained a high-intensity air attack on St. Petersburg and the surrounding area, and the Russian air defense forces were helpless against the large number of German bombers, and the army could only think of clearing the German air base in Finland through a ground offensive, so with the personal intervention of the empress, 12 Guards Infantry Divisions and 20 independent artillery regiments were strengthened into the ranks of the attack on Finland through night marches, bringing the total strength of the Russian army attacking from this side of the Mannerheim Line to 450,000. There are also more than 2,000 cannons. It is more than four times that of the Finns, and in addition to the more than 120,000 Russian troops attacking from the direction of the Bechaimo and Sara regions in the north, the Finnish army's defense on this side is obviously weak. Therefore, it is simply impossible to resist the rapid advance of the Russian army. In this case, the Luftwaffe had to deploy a large number of fighters, dive bombers and even medium bombers to support the defense of the Finnish army, under the strong pressure of German fighters, the Russian ** team deployed in the Russian-Finnish border area was unable to carry out military operations during the day, they had to do everything possible to hide their soldiers, artillery and vehicles, woods, haystacks and even farmhouses, and transfer as many small-caliber anti-aircraft guns and machine guns as possible for air defense. Rifles and even infantry artillery were used against low-flying German fighters, and the Luftwaffe stationed in Finland lost as many as 47 fighters and dive bombers in a week to support the Finnish army, half of which failed to return to Finnish-controlled areas. On the other hand, the Russian army also lost a large number of soldiers and equipment due to German air strikes within a week, but at night when German fighter attacks are limited, the Russian army will become extremely active, and they have launched several large-scale attacks at night.

At 8 p.m. on June 16, the Russian army finally launched a general offensive on the Mannerheim Line.

Although there is no legendary Katyusha and no T-34 across the field, the Russian ** team showed strong ground firepower in front of the Finns, and more than 2,000 artillery pieces of various calibers violently bombarded the already crumbling defense line of the Finnish army with the momentum of a mountain and tsunami.

The Russian infantry rushed up with bayonets, and this night, the Luftwaffe fighters made thousands of sorties in a row, but they failed to stop the Russian army's attack on the ground, and at dawn, the Mannerheim Line fell!

General Mannerheim gathered the remnants of the army while asking the government to send him at least 30,000 additional reinforcements within three days anyway, otherwise the Russian army is likely to defeat the main Finnish force in one fell swoop and drive straight in, even if the Luftwaffe has great ability, it will be difficult to turn the tide of the war.

After receiving the emergency military situation on the front line, the top level of the Finnish government was very anxious, at this time the entire Finland population was only 3 million, and it was widely distributed in more than 300,000 square kilometers of land, so far the Finnish Army has conscripted more than 150,000 regular troops and the same number of militia, plus nearly 10,000 navy and air force, this number is close to the limit of the number of people that can be mobilized in Finland! Not to mention where to transfer 30,000 soldiers at once, even if they could, these troops might not be able to join up with Mannerheim's army before the arrival of the Russian army - the Luftwaffe could wreak havoc on the roads in the Russian-occupied areas, but this did not have a very good stopping effect on the Russian army, which was dominated by infantry and cavalry, and there was no severe cold and ice and snow to stop the Russians in the scorching summer.

At this time, the Finns finally remembered the Germans who had been strongly demanding that ground troops be sent directly to assist in the defense of the Finnish border, and the Finns had feared that the German ** team would not leave once it came, but in the current crisis situation, the Finnish government could not care so much. So on the morning of June 18, an encrypted telegram arrived in Berlin. As early as when the Russians began to attack the Mannerheim Line, the German High Command anticipated that the Finns were likely to lose that important border line in the event of a huge disparity in strength, and in the Barbarossa Plan, it was very important to ensure German air bases in Finland, As a result, two military ports leased to Germany in Finland were stationed with a total of 5,200 marines. In addition, the German Army could also board ships from the ports off the coast of East Prussia and rush to Finland from the sea, but in the current emergency of the war, Chentian proposed to adopt the No. 3 backup plan, that is, to urgently transport the light infantry division to Finland by air, and then transport the armored troops and heavy artillery from the sea.

The straight-line distance from East Prussia in Germany to Helsinki, the capital of Finland, is 600 kilometers, which is naturally not a problem for Germany's best transport planes at present, so the German High Command not only concentrated the large transport planes stationed in East Prussia and Poland, but also urgently requisitioned the passenger planes of the major German airlines, and the four light infantry divisions of the German 8th Army were also ordered to assemble at the airfield near the station. And at the time of this series of tense and orderly ground air movements. The 5,200 marines stationed at the Finnish military port were transported directly by ship to the port of Vyborg, located at the mouth of the Neva River.

Compared to the German Army, which has a long history and the German Navy, which has just celebrated its centennial birthday, the German Marine Corps is a new force, and the idea of establishing the Marine Corps came from the combat operations that landed in England in 1915. Since then, large-scale landing operations have rarely occurred, but landing operations in the hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of people are often possible, so in 1916 the German High Command selected a group of soldiers with landing experience from the 8th Army that landed in Bonamouth and the 5th Army that landed in Dover to form the first Marine Corps.

In the past 12 years, this unit was stationed in the Austro-Hungarian Kingdom and the coastal provinces of Croatia and Slavonia as the vanguard force at the end of the invasion of Austria-Hungary, and there were many opportunities to perform in the German-American War, and it has grown to the scale of more than 100,000 people in six divisions.

After arriving at the new line of defense of the Finns. The soldiers of the German 5th Marine Division were disappointed to find that there were no strong fortifications of reinforced concrete, and for the whole day, exhausted Finn soldiers dug a field line of about 10 kilometers according to the terrain, and at night there were only simple trenches and civil fortifications that meandered outside Vyborg.

The Finns knew that the Russian army always took advantage of the dark and windy time to march quickly, because in this case, it was difficult for German fighters to accurately find their targets even if they took off, and relying on flares to carry out ground attacks was really ineffective. As a result, General Mannerheim sent his only cavalry to reconnoiter and guard, and placed his six infantry divisions evenly in the south, east, and north of Vyborg. In Vyborg Bay, adjacent to the west of the city, the only few Finnish gunboats were under the control of the German Navy, and the two German battle cruisers responsible for escorting the Marines also remained in the Vyborg port area to provide fire support.

Ignoring the combat effectiveness of the German Marines, Mannerheim did not deploy the 5,000 soldiers of the German 5th Marine Division in key areas, but remained in the city of Vyborg as a reserve.

At midnight, the Finnish cavalry spotted the Russian vanguard 5 kilometers east of the city, and after two harassment battles, hundreds of Finnish cavalry were forced to withdraw to Vyborg, and the Russian infantry advanced to the front of the Vyborg line at 2 a.m.

Because it was a rapid march overnight, the vanguard of the Russian army did not carry much artillery, and the artillery preparation that lasted for half an hour was basically carried out by cavalry guns towed by cavalry and infantry guns below 76.2 mm, and the improvised fortifications on the defending side could only withstand such a degree of artillery fire, and after the shelling ended, more than 70,000 Russian troops began to charge!

During the defensive battle of Mannerheim, although the number of the Finnish army was once increased to nearly 130,000 because of reinforcements, the continuous attrition and the loss of the retreat made the strength of General Mannerheim at this time less than 110,000, and many of the wounded soldiers were ready to retreat to the rear by sea, and most of the heavy machine guns and various artillery were lost in Mannerheim, so the firepower was much weaker than before, and the quality of the soldiers was similar. In the first wave of the Russian army, the defenders only relied on the terrain advantage to temporarily repel the opponent, and dozens of German fighters also barely flew over the battlefield under extremely poor line of sight conditions and dropped bombs and strafed the attacking Russian army, and the effect was still not very good. - At 764 o'clock, in the darkest hour before dawn, 3 elite Russian Guards divisions entered the battlefield, and these Russian ace troops, who had won the only battle between the German and Russian armies in Poland, quickly launched an extremely powerful death charge, as long as the Finns' bullets did not hit them, these fearless Russian warriors would move forward bravely, this momentum often led to the ordinary Russian troops who charged with them, and surprisingly these Guards divisions sometimes suffered no more casualties than other units in a battle.

The German Marines on standby in the city could only watch the battle outside the city by the light of fire and the occasional flare, and the equipment of these German soldiers was not much different from that of the ordinary German Army, but the density of the fire was greatly increased - the Marines had an MG17 light machine gun, three MP24 submachine guns, two GG semi-automatic rifles and three Mauser rifles in a group of 1 infantry squads, and the squad leader and machine gunner were equipped with Gigi 1917 pistols, One of the three Mauser riflemen usually carries a standard sniper scope, and this soldier has at least three months of specialized sniper training.