Much love to Indy, Sparty and the whole team!
Indy has spoken very informatively about the difficulties of the Red Army against the Finns in the Winter War. How did the Red Army cope with the same enemy now after learning from its past mistakes? How did the Finns manage to take over so much land at the beginning of the Continuation War?
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The Red Army had not truly implemented what it had learned from the Winter War by the time the Continuation War started. Furthermore the Finns had mobilized a much greater force than predicted by the Soviets. And also the Finnish offensive only started much later on. This meant that the Soviets had already moved troops away from the front facing the Finns to defend against the German Army Group North. This combined with the fact that Finns were able to choose where to attack made it possible for the Finns to have parity with the Soviet forces facing them in quiet sectors and numerical superiority at areas where the offensive was launched.
Initial Finnish offensive also split Soviet on the two sides of the Lake Ladoga which greatly hindered the actions of the Soviet forces. Finns also again aimed rather to encircle rather than directly assault while the Soviets as per ordered tried to hold on the territory - which was just fine for the Finns. This resulted for example in the encirclement battles in the Karelian Isthmus. Early on the Soviet reinforcements came in a piecemeal fashion and were at times dealt in similar manner. One of the most baffling to me is the Soviet 265th Rifle Division which seemingly was thrown in as a stopgap and subsequently wiped out in manner of mere days.
As a consequence of those encirclement actions the road to Leningrad was literally open from the north. There were no defenders between the Finns and Leningrad at the time the first Finnish forces reached the pre-Winter War border at Rajajoki (River Sestra). Plenty of empty bunkers and fortifications. However the Finnish leadership ordered them to stop the advance there. The Soviets did rush in forces to man the defenses but there was a delay of couple of days.
Similar events took place in Olonets Karelia. The Finnish offensive in autumn of 1941 encircled the defending Soviets allowing for rapid advance - the only advance in which Finns used motorized forced reaching river Svir just days after starting the battle at Tuloksa. It should be understood that the Soviet forces facing the Finns were either rushed in reserve units, newly raised units, or remnants of the shattered units so their effectiveness was limited.
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