ABSTRACT
At the Karelian Isthmus, where the Russians' 7th Army with nine divisions poured over the border, there was mass confusion on both sides. For the Russians, it was bumper-to-bumper traffic and hopeless jams along the jigsaw-puzzle roads as vehicles got stuck in ditches or were otherwise disabled. During the crucial diplomatic negotiations in the autumn of 1939, leaders of the National Coalition Party privately criticized Marshal Mannerheim as too old and too afraid of the Soviet Union and as–of all things–a man whose word could not be trusted. Mannerheim's aristocratic bearing had always commanded awe and respect from famous personages as well as the unknown. At his headquarters Mannerheim soberly reviewed Finland's situation. Mannerheim's chief of staff, Lieutenant General Karl Lennart Oesch, forty-seven-year-old scholarly botanist, was known for his even temperament and great interest in scientific detail. To the vital area of Suomussalmi, Mannerheim would send forty-seven-year-old Colonel Hjalmar Siilasvuo.
