"It was in the late autumn of 1939 that the so-called Winter War began. The Russians did not plan on Finnish resistance to take a take-over of their country ... For 105 days in 1939-40 one of the toughest campaigns of the early World War II era was fought. In the context of global war, it was relatively small and yet an estimated 2 million Russian and Finnish soldiers took part. It cost the Soviets a possible 1,000 airplanes and 2,300 tanks. It was not until 1970 that Khrushchev's memoirs revealed the loss of a million Russian lives in the Winter War"--P. viii.