August 29, 2023 • 49 mins
"The White Death," Simo Hayha was just an ordinary Finnish farmer that somehow ended up recording more confirmed kills than any other sniper in military history. In this episode Ben and Pat discuss how this ordinary dude from Finland became the deadliest soldier ever recorded.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Badass of the Week is an iHeartRadio podcast produced by
High five Content January nineteen forty. It is a dark, cold,
snowy evening in the bombed out forests of Coola, Finland.
Lines of dark figures move through the shattered tree line
Russian soldiers pressing forward despite heavy fire from the lines
(00:23):
of finished trenches before them. Artillery, machine guns and screams
of soldiers echo through the night. On a snowy embankment
high above the battlefield, a lone sniper lays a heavily
worn bolt action rifle into a narrow notch on the
snow bank he carved the position days ago. He is
(00:44):
dressed in white from head to toe, including a white
hood and a thick white wool ski mask that covers
his face. You cannot see his breath, even though temperatures
in this icy war zone are well below freezing. He
lies almost completely motionless, invisible amid the snow that covers
everything around him. He aims down the iron sights of
(01:05):
his weapon towards a small squad of Russian troops maneuvering
around the flank of the defenders below. He takes a
deep breath, chambers around and squeezes the trigger, unleashing a
deadly shot, and then another, and another and another. His
name is Simoheya, the White Death, and he's not only
(01:27):
the deadliest man in Finland, he might just be the
deadliest sniper in all of history. Hello, and welcome back
to Badass of the Week. My name is Ben Thompson
and I am here as always with my co host,
doctor Pat Larish. Pat, how's it going for you?
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Okay? How are you, Ben?
Speaker 1 (01:49):
I'm doing okay.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Yeah, you know, we're here telling our stories and I'm
thinking about an earlier episode we did on the Valkyries
and the Amazons and the power of propaganda and how
mystique can accrue to people, like individuals or a group
of people. You know.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Yeah, the propaganda of the Valkyries and the Amazons was
very powerful, right. Did the Greeks believe that the Amazons
were real? Do you think were they kind of like
a I.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Think so, yeah, I think so. I think they believed
that they were real, but that they were kind of
remote and so potentially kind of different from the normal
course of events.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
But if your ship got blown off course, there was
a chance you could run into them.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. It was part of the world. It
was part of the world that was way out there,
but it was still part of the world.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Yeah. And as much as we like to think of
the valkyries as being mythological figures, which they are, right,
they're lightning death goddesses that fly through the night sky
on winged horses and shoot lightning bolts out of their spears,
But the Vikings also believed that that was real, like
(03:03):
that is you know, that was part of their religion,
was that when you die, these valkyries take you to Valhalla. So,
you know, as wild and out there as it seems
to us, is this kind of fantasy thing, something you
only see in like an opera or like a fantasy novel.
They believed there was a chance they were going to
run into them one day, and the Amazon's is the same.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
And that has power, it does.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
And even you know, even today and kind of what
we're going to talk about today, the propaganda is maybe
even more prevalent nowadays than it was back then, when
we're kind of bombarded with information. I think about the
beginnings of the Ukraine War. I'm working on a book
on the Ukraine War right now, and I'm reminded of
the Ghost of Kiev.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Oh yeah, the Ghost of Ciev.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
Yeah, it was like a fighter pilot. We're using footage
from a video game, but it was they were showing
this fighter pilot flying over key you shooting down all
these Russian Su twenty sevens MiGs and stuff, and that
was very powerful. People were very you know, kind of
mobilized at the beginning of the war that like, oh,
you know, this guy's out there and he's doing this
badass stuff. I almost wrote an article about him until
(04:11):
I realized it wasn't real.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
Oh yeah, yeah. I saw the memes circulating and it's like, wow,
who is this? Like I was psyched over here, you know,
on another continent.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Yeah yeah, And I mean, you know, the Russian warship
go fuck yourself guy, Like they put him on a
postage stamp and like he just said like fuck you
to a warship and then basically, you know, they surrendered,
they lost that battle, but that guy is like a
national hero in Ukraine and that made like the meme
circuit as well. And so yeah, I mean, propaganda is powerful.
(04:45):
It's it's demoralizing to the enemy and it's inspiring to
the Allies. I mean, there's an argument to be made
that the Ukraine War lasts ten days if Vladimir Zelenski
doesn't make a thirty second TikTok video in front of
the capitol on the night of the attack, right like
you couldn't, that's an argument to be made for that. Yeah,
(05:05):
we're gonna deal with what we're talking about today is
also fairly propaganda forward. We're going to go back a
little bit. We're gonna go back a little bit in
time to a man. He's not the Ghost of Kiev,
but he is the White Death, which is also a
pretty badass nickname. Yes, we're going to talk about a
guy named Stimilhaya, who was a Finnish guy who was
(05:29):
a sniper who fought the Russians when they invaded his country.
And as successful as he was on the battlefield, and
we'll get into all of that, he was also very
successful as a propaganda tool in the same way the
Russians did later with vasili Zeitsev and some of the
other characters they had. We'll get into all that in
a minute. But what I want to leave with going
into the commercial break here is a propaganda phrase that
(05:50):
was circulating amongst the Finnish people as their country was
being invaded by Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union in
the winter of nineteen thirty nine. The Russians are so
many and our country is so small. Where will we
find space to bury them all? In the winter of
(06:19):
nineteen thirty nine, Joseph Stalin and the fula might of
the Soviet Union invade the small Scandinavian country of Finland
in what is known pat as the Winter War.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Yes, and this is coming out of the Molotova Rippentrough Pact,
which is a pact named for the foreign ministers of
Nazi Germany and the USSR. It was a non aggression pact.
It was signed in August of nineteen thirty nine, and
then in September both countries, instead of aggressing each other,
(06:55):
invade Poland.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
It was the one thing they could both agree on,
was let's get these Poles. Yes.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Yeah. And then in November of that year, despite the
fact that there is this little, you know, non aggression
treaty out there, Russia invades Finland.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Yeah, And the non aggression pact was was let's not
attack each other, right, was just kind of like Yeah,
let's divide up all this land that's between our two countries.
You take Czechoslovakia, we'll take Finland. We'll divide Poland down
the middle.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Yeah, okay, but.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
It was supposed to be a walk in the park.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
It was supposed to be. And what does it look
like from the Finns perspective, Well, the Finns had thirty
two tanks and one hundred and fourteen aircraft for the
whole country, for the whole country. Now contrast this with
Russians who had, you know, about five thousand tanks and
three thousand airplanes.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
That's way more.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
That's a lot.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Yeah, that's a lot more. That's more than thirty two.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
Yeah, that's more than thirty two. It's more than one
hundred fourteen.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
And I'm I'm not sure that, like, you know, I
don't know if the Finns were I don't know what
the technology difference between the tanks. But yeah, it doesn't
matter if you have really bad stuff. Five thousand tanks
against thirty two is you know, you have to really
mess up.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Yeah, and Poland had fallen and okay, yes, there are
ostensible reasons for the war. Leningrad used to be known
as Saint Petersburg. It's twenty miles from the border, and
they wanted to border. They are like a buffer between
them and Finland. When Finland said no, they attacked.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Yeah, the Russians were kind of like, you know, your
borders a little too close to our capital, so just
give us this big chunk of land here in. Finland
was like no, and Russia was like, yeah, this is
an insult to our country. Five thousand tangs go.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
So obviously Finland has to do something about this, and they,
you know, put out a draft. Everyone's being called up.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Including including a thirty four year old farmer named Simo
Heeya So. Simo Heeya So He was born December seventeenth,
nineteen oh five, in a part of Finland called Karelia.
We're not talking about Han Solo's home planet. It's Karelia
with a K, and it's near the border with Russia.
It's actually one of the lands that was probably going
(09:24):
to be seated to Russia. It was one of the
ones that Russia had demanded. So if if Finland had
just given them Russia the land that they had asked for,
Simo would be a Russian citizen now or I guess
a Soviet citizen. He's also I mean his farm puts
his farm kind of on the front line of this war.
The Russians are you know, he can they're coming into
(09:45):
his county, right. Yeah, he is a veteran. He's thirty four,
which is older for a serviceman to be drafted in,
but Finland at this time and I think still to
day has compulsory military service. So he joined the local
militia in nineteen twenty two and he did a little
two year stint with the Finnish Army. He was assigned
(10:07):
to bicycle Battalion two.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
So I'd just like to give a shout out to
all of our listeners who are cyclists.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Yes, there was bicycle infantry. It was a thing in
World War one and two. Yes, easier than a horse,
I guess. So. Simo is a little over five feet
tall and he did his term with the Finnish Army.
He reached the rank of corporal.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Good for him. Yeah, and also I'd like to give
a shout out to people who are short, who are
barely over five feet tall, including your humble podcast co
host here.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
You know, there are things that it is a huge
advantage to be short. Naval service, like tank you know,
the tanks for meet small and smaller people operate them
because it's good to keep a low profile. Motorcycle, racing,
horse jockeys. There's a lot of things in which anything
that involves like speed or weight, like you know, short
(11:02):
people have an advantage. And sniping, apparently because he's a
Simo is going to be a very famous sniper. Yes,
and he has a low profile. Literally there's a footless
of him to shoot than there is of other people
then there is of an ivan drago or somebody exactly.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Yeah. So when he's not serving in the Finnish Army,
he's living peacefully in his farming village not far from
the Russian border. He's farming, probably hunting also, because that's
a thing you did. He was called up.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Yeah, and so he is. You know, he's a he's
kind of a Finnish mountain man, right, he lives if
you want to picture like white mountains. Finland has always
had kind of had this great reputation of being excellent skiers.
They always do well in the Winter Olympics. The Vikings
the Finish are a little different from the Norwegians and
(11:51):
the Swedes, and the Vikings in those regions referred to
the people who lived in Finland as ski fins ski
fin because they could ski shooting arrow at the same time,
and that was very impressive to the Vikings. So you
want to picture like white snow capped mountains and strong
winds and evergreen trees that are covered in snow, and
(12:13):
this little five foot tall Finnish mountain man, I'm picturing
him like shopping logs with a nax, you know. And
he's got some kind of like animal pelts in his house,
his little log cabin. I don't know about any of
this for sure. I'm making the whole thing up off
the top of my head, but this is kind of
the vibe of Simohaya. He's got excellent vision, good survival skills,
(12:35):
he's skis, he's a good hunter. But one thing that
came up during his time in the Finnish military is
that he had an excellent ability to estimate distance. To like,
and this is a thing that I suck at personally,
but to kind of look at an object and tell
exactly how far away it is, which is a very
useful thing for shooting. But it's not not a you
(12:58):
know it's and for probably a number of other things,
but it's not. It's not a skill that I've developed
very well.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
But he evidently did.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
He did. Yeah, he was an excellent shooter. He had
the you know, breath control and manual control, hand control
and estimating the distance is another big part of that.
And one of his former commanders when he was in
the bicycle Battalion said that Simo once was able to
hit at target sixteen times at one hundred and fifty
meters in under a minute. Wow. Yeah, one hundred fifty
(13:26):
meters out shot at sixteen times in a minute.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Wow. So that's less than five seconds per round.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Yeah, and that's per shot. Yeah, ridiculous, that's very difficult.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Yeah. Bam bam, bam, bam bam. Yeah. And what does
one hundred and fifty meters look like. That's like roughly
five hundred feet.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
It's further than you'd think.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Yeah. Yeah, I guess if we're thinking in terms of
baseball stadiums, because of course they have baseball stadiums all
over the landscape in Finland, it's being like, say, ten
rows back in the outfield and trying to hit the
batter with a paintball go or trying to throw a
strike from there. I mean, it probably depends on which
stadium in particular you're talking about, anyway, but this is
a this is a non trivial distance. This is a
(14:09):
big deal.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean try to picture being ten
rows back at Yankee Stadium and trying to hit the
batter with the paintbal done. Yeah, And now he's got
a bunch of Soviet Union soldiers marching through his backyard
and he doesn't like it.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
Get off my lawn.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
He's got a military experience. He's got his old rifle
that's hanging above the wooden door to his log cabin.
And when the war starts, reserves get called up, he
grabs his old basic infantry mosen Negatt rifle and falls
in a Finnish army and he's assigned to a unit
(14:44):
that is led by a guy named arna'sti uti line.
I mean, you might have to do this one. I
don't know if I can manage it.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Arna utu line in.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Arna utah linean. See it sounds so pretty when you
say it, but looking at this it's ju he I.
I'm not even gonna spell it. Looking at this name
it's it seems unpronounceable when you say you to line
it and that sounds so melodic. Is so nice, right,
it's so easy to ligne in, no problem.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
And so this guy with a melodic name, what do
we know about him?
Speaker 1 (15:16):
He's the butcher of Morocco.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
WHOA, that sounds not melodic. So that means he served
in the French Foreign Legion in Morocco and he's got
a lot of experience under his belt. When the war starts,
he's badass in his own right, extremely so put down
some rebels, even earns French citizenship for his troubles.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
Yeah, yeah, so he was he had served in the
French Foreign Legion, which you know Finland when the war starts.
Kind of like what was happening with Ukraine when the
war started. Here is like they're desperate for veterans. They
anybody who has any kind of military service. That's a
huge advantage, right, even the one year in the militia
is an advantage for Cimo over some of these other
people who you don't have time to train these guys
(15:59):
how to you know, march in order and carry a
rifle and reload it and clean it. Right, you got
to put these guys right out there to go fight. Yeah, yeah,
arnauta line and he had served in the French Foreign
Legion in North Africa and he had become an officer there.
And if you serve in the French Foreign Legion for
I believe it's ten years, you become a French citizen.
(16:21):
So he had done that. But he goes in and
he was living in Finland at the time, and he
joins up and Simo ends up falling in with him.
The other thing with Arna is that he was a
very powerful propaganda guy. You don't get a nickname like
the Butcher of Morocco unless you kind of are willing
to play into that a little bit. And he's part
of the reason talking about propaganda, he's part of the
(16:43):
reason why Simo is probably as big of a deal
as he is. And we'll get into some of that
in a little bit. So one of the things that
Arna utah Linen is famous for in the Winter War,
he's a big hero in Finland. So he is in
command of a region called and Cola is kind of
the crux of the Soviet advance. This is where the
(17:06):
Fins have to hold or they're going to lose the region,
and he very famously when asked, like, you know, will
Cola hold, he said, quote, it will hold unless the
orders are to run away.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
So they're going to stick to Cola. They're going to
protect Colaw. They're going to hold off all of these
invaders unless the orders actually come from above saying okay,
get out of there. And that's the only thing that
will make them stop protecting Colaw is if they get orders.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
There's some nuance in the phrase, right, like you know,
it will hold unless the orders are to run away. Yeah,
I don't think the nuance in the original finish kind
of translates into the English.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
No, I think we're missing a.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Lot unless the orders are to literally run away, Yes,
the only way we leave.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
Maybe he's thinking it's not likely that those orders of
that nature are going to come down the way line.
So we're holding on to Colah. We're holding on to Cola. Yeah,
Keste co Cola. And then what is uta Linan's answer?
Cola will hold unless the orders are to run killer
Keste last Carcun New York Seman or something like that, allegedly.
(18:18):
So I'm doing my best.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
So Arnie utiliten is at Cola and he is there
facing five thousand Soviet tanks with his thirty five tanks.
But the one thing he has on his side that
the Russians don't have is Simo, heya and Simo. You
know the mountain man, the thirty four year old, five
foot tall mountain man from you know, the middle of nowhere, Finland.
(18:43):
He's a trained guy.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
Who can shoot a target from way the.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
Hell out there exactly from one hundred and fifty yards
out sixteen times and under a minute. He is really
good at fighting. It turns out he was really good
at hunting animals on his farm for sustenance, but he's
also really good at shooting Russians attacking his hometown. It
kind of helps his cause a little bit that the
Russians at this point they're very bad at fighting. There's
(19:12):
a lot of Russians, and there's several reasons for this.
I think a Russian person is good at fighting. I
don't want to I don't want to disparage the people
of Russia because I really do not have any interest
in getting into a fistfight with a Russian man. In
real life, they're very tough, very brave, but the organizational
(19:33):
structure of their army was extremely poor. Stalin is very
famous for purging anybody he considered a threat, which was
anybody who had any power or understanding of the military.
He had spent several years before this just executing any
(19:53):
military officer who not only was he thought was like disloyal,
but just was even remote competent. So the entire army
is replaced by yes, men who are just totally afraid
of him.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Yes, men who are inexperience, inexperienced.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
Yes, Yeah, here's a great example of how unprepared the
Russians were. Like when that non aggression pack was signed,
the Russians and the Germans were just kind of like, well,
we'll just divide all of this Eastern europe land up
between us and make our own little empires and just
promise not to backstab each other in the process. But
while the Germans were very effective at this, the Russian
(20:32):
soldiers fighting in Finland, do you remember we talked about
the white snow covered mountains and the white snow covered
trees and all of that.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
Very peaceful, very white.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
The Russians were not given white camouflage. They were given
their traditional green uniforms.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
Hmm. Yeah, we were talking, and there's a particular garb
that is useful when you're a soldier in a white,
snow covered forest.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
Yes, and it's not and that green not green. It's
not forest green, olive drab, it's not green. They also
weren't given cold weather gear, even though they're fighting in
the winter.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
You think that would be a no brainer.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
But yeah, you'd think a jacket, okay, even one of
those you know, fuzzy Russian hats with the flaps something
like that.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
So it's just kind of hitting me, like, what were
they thinking.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
They're Russians, it's cold in Russia.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
They know how to do cold.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
Most of these troops were conscripts who were brought in
from Siberia. Should be used to like, you know.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
Okay, okay, okay. So on the one side, we've got
some guys who are a little bit inexperienced, relatively speaking,
wearing green and maybe not completely layered up against the cold.
And then on the other side, which is the Finnish side,
we've got.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
We've got guys in white camouflage. I mean, they're also
in experience. The difference here is the Russians are largely conscripts,
which means they were forced into service here and now
they're attacking Finland. They don't really want to do They
just want to get home to their families. They're not
well trained, they're not well equipped. They don't have good weapons,
(22:07):
they don't have enough ammon, they don't have cold weather gear,
they don't have white uniforms. The Fins also, for the
most part, are also inexperienced. But they are fighting at
home and they're on their home turf. Yes, and they're
highly motivated. Yes, And they have cold weather gear and
they have skis. We talked about the ski Fins before.
(22:30):
They're very good skiers. And the Russians are stuck. They
have those five thousand tanks and those three thousand aircraft
or however many we were talking about, And.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
How do these tanks move through a monitary forest.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
On the roads. So they have to use the roads,
which kind of let's you know where they're coming from. Yes,
they don't move through the big high snow banks. The
airplanes aren't super effective because there's a lot of cloud
cover because it's snowy and gray. And when they look
down from above trying to drop bombs on people, they
see white and they see trees, and they see clouds
(23:03):
and they see white uniforms on white snow and they
are not super effective. Yeah, temperatures here kind of like
you know, it's the winter war. Russia chose to attack
in the winter, the non aggression practice sign in August
and the attack in the winter, and temperatures get down
to negative forty.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Negative forty celsius or.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
Fahrenheit celsius and fahrenheit. This is a weird spot where
it's the same. Negative forty is the same for both
celsius and fahrenheit. Super cold, super cold in both super cold.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Yes, let's take away, yes, yeah, And what's Simo up to.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
He is defending his home. He's a little guy and
we have to picture him kind of wearing all white,
and he wore a white balat Clavis so like like
a bank robber ski mask with the eyes and the
mouth cut out, all white. He's outside his hometown. The
Russians are advancing on his house. Personally, he's got the
hood up on his jacket. He's got his old rifle,
(23:59):
his old mosen N.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Eight, so it's old, but he's using it.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
He knows it. He didn't want any of the newer stuff.
He knows this gun and he wants to use it.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
It's his old friend.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
He's using his iron sights. He doesn't use a telescopic sight.
It was reliable, he'd mastered it. It's the kind of
the stock rifle for this time period. You know. He's
kind of perched up on a snow bank looking down
at just this row of there's tanks, but it's just
it's guys in green uniforms who don't know what they're doing.
Walk in on the white background. They might as well
(24:31):
be wearing day glow colors. Right. Yeah, he's got his
white on. He's sneaking through the woods, laying there sometimes
for days, waiting for people to come in to range
for him.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
I'm imagining the breath coming out of his mouth making
those clouds.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
No, because he put snow in his mouth. He would
eat snow. Oh, clever, lower the body temperature in his
mouth so he wouldn't exhale smoke, because that was how
he would catch other people. He would catch enemy snipers
because he could see their breath.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Clever.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Same thing with the telescopic sights. Nowadays, telescopic sites have
technology on them that they don't reflect. But in nineteen
thirty nine. Telescopic site allows you to magnify five x
ten x twenty x. But but if the light hits
it wrong, it's going to reflect the light back.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Right.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
It's a piece of glass. Yeah, yeah, yeah, So he
was able to catch guys that way too, and he
just he learned what not to do and then he
didn't do it. He's on this berm. He's watching these
guys come along. He's watching the tanks roll and these
guys move on foot in front of him. A lot
of guys right, and he's here at Cola. He's at
the center of all of this. He's got a water
(25:41):
bottle that he keeps a canteen on him, a metal
water bottle, and he unscrews it and he pours the
water onto the snow in front of where he's going
to put his rifle.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
Why is that a good luck offering or something.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
No, it makes the snow in front of him wet,
so that when he fires the rifle, it doesn't kick
up a bunch of snow, you know, the recoil of
the rifle. He's using smokeless powder, but the rifle will
kick out a puff of puff of snow. So that
will give him away. Yeah, and he's trying not to
do that, clever. Enemies are moving, the tanks are moving,
(26:13):
and there's Russian artillery. There's artillery from both sides firing over,
mostly Russian. But he waits for the sounds of the
artillery and sitting here, he's lining up these guys. He's
got him into sights and he waits for the whistle
of the artillery shell of an incoming round, and he
tries to fire when the artillery shell goes off, so
then his gun shot is masked by the explosion of
(26:34):
the artillery.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
He's put some thought into this.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
Yes, yeah, he is good at this, right, and a
lot of what he does ends up being the things
that are taught to people who want to go into
sniper programs in the future. So he hears the artillery
and he fires. And this guy can shoot sixteen times
in a minute and hit targets f one hundred and
fifty meters out and he can get one or two
(26:57):
shots off with an artillery round.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
You know, around this time, the Russians are shooting, and
there was at one point during the war, especially in
the Kola region, they were saying the Russians were firing
forty thousand rounds of artillery a day. The Finns could
manage one thousand back in return. But that's a lot
of opportunities to fire. And so he sits there and
he'll fire, He fires seven or eight rounds, and then
he moves to a different position. And he has prepared
(27:20):
all of these positions the night before, so he knows,
he knows where he's going, he knows where he's going
to fire, where he's going to fall back to if
they spot him, and where he's going to move to
if they don't spot him. And he's just kind of
taken these guys out as there. I mean, there's no
other way around it. He's extremely effective at taking out
large numbers of enemy infantry. And there's a number of
(27:43):
advantages to this, not just kind of you know, eliminating
enemy infantry is is its own advantage in military maneuvering,
but taking out enemy infantry is its own advantage on
a battlefield. But the other thing is there are Russians.
They don't know how many guys are out there. The gunfire,
they don't see the shooter. Several guys are going down,
(28:04):
killed or wounded, or injured, and they don't know what
they're up against. They might think they're up against one
hundred guys instead of just one. So he by himself
can turn back advances by the enemy or flanking maneuvers
or things like that, because he gets out there and
he starts shooting these guys or shooting at these guys.
Even if he misses, it's it's still a data point
that a bullet hit the ground over here. They think
(28:26):
they're under fire by a larger group of guys and
they fall back. These guys are conscripts and they want
to go home.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
Yeah, they psyck themselves out.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
So he becomes a hero to his people and a
ghost to his enemies, and they call him Bailes Smirt,
the White Death. He will become the most famous Finnish
soldier of this war, and to the Russians he is
he's a boogeyman. And we're going to talk a little
bit more about the effects of that after this break.
(29:05):
So it is the winter of nineteen thirty nine, moving
into nineteen forty and Baylis Smurt the White Death is
now a very famous name all across Finland, both for
the Allies of the Finns and their enemies. Arnie Uta
Lynen is really hammering this home on the propaganda front.
(29:26):
And there are stories of Simoea the White Death. He's
got grenades and a rifle. Sometimes he's got a submachine gun.
Sometimes he's fighting on the line. Sometimes he's the loner.
And their stories coming out she shot twenty five people
in a day, you know, keeping the baseball analogy going.
That's an entire baseball team, including the bullpen and the bench.
(29:48):
And these stories kind of going coming out in the
newspaper and they're inspiring, and you know, Baylis Smurt the
White Death, which Bayls Smurt also means. It's also the
name that the Finns and the Russians gave to like
a really bad frosts that kills people like, so it said,
there's a double meaning here, not just the White Death,
but it's the word for a specific type of frost,
(30:08):
like flash frost that kills people, like what.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
Happens if you go around in the woods in Finland
in the winter. Yeah, and if you're not careful, if
you're wearing bright green for example, like a.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
Russian soldier, or if you're not wearing cold weather gear
like a Russian soldier.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
Well, yeah, yeah, Bayless smirt, Yeah yeah, he could say
he's awarded a custom rifle by the commander of the
Finnish Army, Carl Gustav Emil von Mannerheim.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
There's a lot of propaganda it really, we're talking Ghost
of Kiev. If we were talking Russian warship, go fuck yourself,
Baylis Smurt is powerful news for people at home to
be motivated. Hey, maybe you know our country is so
big in the Russians are so many where we find
place to bury them all. There was a rhyme there
(30:58):
that I missed when I recounted this just now. But
this is inspiring to these people. Yeah, and it's demoralized
into the Russians. The Soviets are. They're moving in here
and they're they're taking the heavy line. They were supposed
to stomp Finland. They were supposed to show up here
and crush Finland and take it, and they are kind
of getting their butts kicked at Cola. They can't take it.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
Yeah, Finland's stomping back and you're talking about propaganda, and
this is making me think of the so called white Tights, Yes,
which is a well, I don't want to say myth,
but a story that's going around, and the white tights
are supposedly, allegedly a group of women snipers who wear
(31:44):
you know, white athletic gear so they can blend in
because as we know, white is a good camouflage color.
And these stories have been going around among Russian soldiers
and also other soldiers in the area since at least
World War In World War Two, there's a little bit
of a historical basis for this. The Soviets had a
(32:04):
special school for women's snipers and they trained about two
thousand women.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
They had some very effective ones too, I mean Milan Paviachenko.
She was a Ukrainian woman who fought for the Soviets
in the war and she was very successful in Stalingrad
and stuff.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
Yeah, so there's a precedent for this story, myth, and
there's a mystique. The story is that allegedly there are
women who are super athletic, they're good at skiing, and
of course they're klad an all white athletic gear and
maybe it's you know, sleek, form fitting athletic year it's
(32:40):
so why I call them white tights.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
I'm sure it is when you when they're thinking about it,
I'm picturing biathlon.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
Yeah, you ever watched biathlon, It's like one of my
favorite things to watch in the middle of the night
on the Winter Olympics.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
Yeah, And I mean this is where the biathlon comes from.
You ski and then you pause and manage your breath
and you shoot. And those are the two two skills,
which might seem like a very random combination. But now
that we know the story of Simojeha, and now that
we're looking at the story of the White Tights, it
makes sense. These are the skills you need if you're
(33:11):
going to be a sniper in say the Finished Forest,
for example. And so these these White Tights, these sniper
ladies will lie in wait for their marks, who are
often Russian officers, and when the moment is right, they
will deal swift death from several hundred meters away. And
as we've seen in the case of sim Ojea, apparently
(33:33):
humans can shoot effectively from several hundred meters if they're
good at it.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
Yeah, nowadays you're kind of like the expected range for
a sniper is eight hundred meters with a modern rife form.
This is not that this is World War two stuff.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
Right, and sometimes allegedly, and I say allegedly, because this
is how the stories go. They will sometimes torture their prey,
like maybe they'll shoot a Russian soldier's right hand so
he can't fire his weapon. But the White leave their
calling card, as it were. Sometimes they hack into radio
frequencies and they allegedly send messages about what they'll do
(34:06):
to their targets once they catch them. And allegedly many
of these White Tights were former biathlawn champions. And okay,
given the skills you need in a biathlon, okay, you know,
but it doesn't mean that everyone who competes in a
biathlon is necessarily a sniper, right then.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
Yeah, exactly. And you know, I've seen, I've heard some
of these stories of White Tights. I think I wrote
about them in one of my books and he did. Yeah,
they would do stuff like you know, the stories would go.
And these are you know, they're kind of ghosts as well,
and you know, they're probably myth that was perpetuated amongst
the ranks of the Soviets. We do know that there
were women's snipers in real life and Sarajevo and the
(34:45):
Soviet Union Armies and stuff. But yeah, they would like
they'd ambush a patrol and shoot the lead guy in
a way that he wouldn't die. They just like shoot
him in the balls or something right, like something gruesome,
and he'd be laying there. And then you know, in
the stories, like you said, she would broadcast to those
Russian troops on a secure military frequency like hey, why
(35:07):
don't you go get your friend, he's dying out there.
Leave that guy kind of screaming out in the open,
and shoot anybody else that came out. Horrible stuff. But
these are stories that start getting told among soldiers who
are already scared and cold and you know, embattled, and
you know, it's not good for morale for stories like
(35:27):
this to be circulating, kind of like Baylis murt as well, exactly.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
Yeah, yeah, and these stories keep coming up. These stories
were circulating during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the
nineteen eighties, They were circulating during the South Asesia campaign
in two thousand and eight, and there the White Tighter
said to be fighting along the Georgians. You know, so
this is a story that has legs. It's a story
(35:54):
about people who are feared, whether or not they're one
hundred percent accurate or not, and there's a real fear
of the sniper who shoots from nowhere.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
Yeah, I think about Sniper Wolf from Metal Gear Solid.
I don't know if you've played any of the Metal
Gear Solid games, but Sniper Wolf is kind of a
quintessential White Tights type of person. Yeah, but that's kind
of the idea, and interestingly, like, yeah, it is kind
of they always are kind of from the Ukraine or
Baltic States regions, which you know, if I remember correctly,
(36:27):
is also where the Greeks thought the Amazons were. Okay, yeah,
we kind of looked like Valkyrie isn't from northern Scithia
a little bit. I'm reaching for connections here.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
Well, these stories have ways of lasting, and you and
I both know that historically there have been women who
have been amazingly good shots, and so there might be
some exaggeration, but there might also be a basis for
the exaggeration. So yeah, and you know, these stories have
real world consequences. Since these stories are floating around, sometimes
(37:08):
the enemy will use them as maybe an excuse to
arrest women who are maybe just ordinary rank and file
service women or just ordinary women on the suspicion of
being snipers. In twenty fourteen, a Ukrainian service woman named
Nadiya Savchenko was captured and described by her captors as
(37:30):
a well trained sniper. Allegedly, she had a map with
positions where she could hide and with good positions to
set up her rifle. The people who interrogated her operated
under the assumption that she was a sniper. Was she
really a sniper? Was this just sort of an opportunistic
sort of thing.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
You know, or like a witch hunty kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
Yeah, yeah, Yeah, you're.
Speaker 1 (37:52):
Ghosts already, so they Yeah, you find them if you're
looking for them.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
Yeah. So it's a persistent myth. And do we have
proof for the existence of the White Tights? Not? As such,
we have proof of the existence of the story of
the White Tights. It's a really effective piece of propaganda.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
Yeah, yeah, and you know it is. It's interesting. And
there are like, you know, like you said, I read
some story about some woman being drawn and quartered because
they thought she was a sniper, Like yeah, horrible things, right,
and you know, and these people are accused of doing
these horrible things and then they get treated horribly. I
don't know, where is just an awful brutal thing that
you never would want to experience, yes, in your life.
(38:33):
But that is kind of where we're at with Baylis
smurt as well. In nineteen forty Simo Hey As he's badass,
and the Russians want to get him, and they're willing
to use like extreme means to try to make that happen.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
And how do you use extreme means against like a
sniper who's dressed on white, who's a little over five.
Speaker 1 (38:54):
Feet and you don't know where he is or anything. Yeah,
they attack him with aircraft, they attack him with artillery mortars,
they send counter snipers out there to try to find them.
He of course takes out the counter snipers and the
artillery is kind of just shooting blindly. His positions are
pretty well prepared and they can't see him. But anytime
they suspect that he is there, and I imagine there
(39:14):
were many times in which he wasn't there that they
suspected he was there, they are kind of carpet bombing
any place that they think he might be hiding. They're
willing to commit large amounts of resources to get this
one five foot one guy with a wooden rifle. You
know and iron sights, and they are doing all kinds
(39:35):
of things to try to take this guy out. But
he's doing his thing. He's skiing and he's shooting, which
is what you said the white tights do. It's what
the ski fins did. It's a practice that dates back
to the Norse god Ruler, who was the god of
skiing and hunting, which is pretty cool. By athlon god,
(39:55):
ski and shoot at the same time. Yeah, biathlon god.
Speaker 2 (39:58):
Yeah, you describe people shooting a bow and arrow while
they're skiing, and I'm imagining that scene in one of
the Lord of the Rings movies where it's the Battle
of Helm's Deep and Lego Loss. The Elf is on
he's standing on someone's shield and.
Speaker 3 (40:16):
He's like he's skiing or like.
Speaker 2 (40:20):
Skateboarding honestly down some stairs and he's shooting his bow
and arrow and it was It's a pretty cool scene.
And I'm imagining people doing this in the forests of Finland.
Speaker 1 (40:30):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's totally it. I think you. Yeah,
I always think of it as surfing. Surfing, surfing the
shield down the stairs and shooting book. It's not easy.
You're moving. It's hard enough to shoot something when you're
standing still, but like, you know, to exert yourself to
the degree that skiing requires you to do. And this
is not like skiing at Whistler, right, this is backcountry
like hard skiing, like hard work while people are launching
(40:52):
artillery at you. You know, there's a lot of stuff
that has to happen here, and he's awesome at it.
He's he's like, in his own way, single handedly turning
the tide of the war and helping the Fins hold
off this Russian assault.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:07):
On March's second of nineteen forty, Simo Heea is in
his position. He is firing down into a group of
Russians and they guess where he is. They return fire
on him. He's trying to fight his way out, but
he is caught in the jaw with an explosive bullet. Yeah,
(41:30):
like they had these. That is a bullet that detonates
on impact with your face. Yeah, And he blows off
a big portion of his jaw and he goes down
and the guys who are with him are horrified. Right,
my god, they got him. He's laying there, he's not moving.
They drag him over. The medics come and drag him
back to the hospital tent. They throw him in there
(41:51):
with the rest of the dead bodies. Yeah, he's kind
of lined up as he's not going to make it.
Half his face is gone, this guy, you know, that's it.
Billis is no more. But then his leg starts twitching
and it turns out he's not dead. Whoa he is.
He's in a coma, and he wakes eleven days later,
(42:14):
and the war's over when he wakes up. Whoa, he
misses the last eleven days of the war.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
So he does eventually recover from that explosive bullet to
the jaw.
Speaker 1 (42:24):
He does, so he lives. He goes in a coma.
He's pretty horribly scarred for the rest of his life.
But you know, it takes fourteen months and twenty six
surgeries for him to recover from the injury. Yeah. But
while he's laid up in the hospital, he wrote a
letter to the local newspaper that they needed to retract
(42:48):
the death notice for Bayliss Smurt, which I love.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
Oh, I'm thinking of that line attributed to Mark Twain.
Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated exactly so.
Speaker 1 (43:03):
The Winter War ends in March of nineteen forty and
while Stalin and the Soviets acquire twenty two thousand square
miles of Finland, it cost them dearly. They lost somewhere
in the order of three to four hundred thousand soldiers
in conscripts. And while I'm sure Stalin was able to
use his propaganda to spin that as a Soviet victory,
(43:25):
it was not what he was expecting when he moved
his guys into Finland. Yeah, simo, heya. He survives the war.
He receives five medals for valor, and one of those
medals is that he wins like every medal that you
can get for being a soldier in Finland, but one
that he always really valued was the Kola Cross, which
(43:45):
was only given to people who performed heroic acts in
that battle, which was, and I would wagers still is
the single most famous battle in the history of Finland.
Speaker 2 (43:57):
Yeah, so this is a great moment of Finish national pride, exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
And yeah, he's promoted from corporal to he was still
a corporal while he was doing all of this. He's
promoted to second lieutenant and at the end of the
war he is He's credited officially as as killing five
hundred and five Russian soldiers in the war. Some numbers
say five hundred and forty two. I don't really like
(44:23):
the keeping a body count metric of this. I think
that it's you know, yeah, I think it's it's grim,
like it is. I mean, not that anything talking about
war and snipers in general isn't grim, but it's it's
grim to try to count bodies. And also, like you know,
almost certainly these numbers are always exaggerated, right.
Speaker 2 (44:43):
Yeah, but it just goes to show you that stories.
Speaker 1 (44:47):
There is evolved, and it's not a video game. Right,
there's not like some AI keeping track of this stuff.
You don't get plus thirty five points. It's not call
of duty, right, Like they're human beings, right, They've got
moms and wives and whatever, right, and yeah and dogs. Yeah.
And Simo these numbers, for these numbers, he's credited was
shooting more, having more confirmed sniper kills than any other
(45:10):
soldier in the history of warfare. But Simo he didn't
really like talking about it. And I can imagine why.
Speaker 2 (45:17):
Because half of his jaw was blown off.
Speaker 1 (45:20):
That could be one reason. But really there's a quote
from him he says, I did what I was told
to do as well as I could. There would be
no Finland unless everyone else had done the same.
Speaker 2 (45:32):
I imagine this was a written quote, but that is an
incredibly badass thing to say and very true to Unfortunately,
all of war soldiers do what they're told and they
do as well as they can because it's life and death.
There's no time in war for any less than your best.
Speaker 1 (45:52):
Yeah, And that's kind of how he viewed his life.
What he did wasn't for glory or fame. It was
just to do as well as he could and to
protect his home and the others around it him. He
was a very powerful piece of propaganda and he was
instrumental in helping Finland survive as a country, and it's
part of how they made their way through the Winter War.
And I think that's more valuable a contribution than you know,
(46:14):
carving Tally marks on the butt of your rifle. You know, Yes,
he went home and he ended up missing the Continuation War,
so when you know, we had that non aggression pact
we talked about before once and some people credit the
Winter War for this, but like the idea in that
scenario is that Hitler saw how poorly Russia performed attacking
(46:39):
Finland and was like, actually, maybe these guys suck and
maybe I can take them. So he attacked Russia and
when he did, the Finns joined him. They they tried
to retake the areas that had been lost to the
Soviet Union.
Speaker 2 (46:57):
Right, which it's understandable.
Speaker 1 (46:59):
They lost twenty two thousand square miles to the Russians.
They didn't have any love for the Russians. Germany was
attacking them. Germany was like, hey, do you want some
guns and money to help you retake your land? And
they said yes, and they joined the Germans in the war.
Speaker 2 (47:12):
Yeah, when you put it that.
Speaker 1 (47:13):
Way, Seimo didn't participate in that phrase of the war.
It didn't work out well for Finland, as with Germany
again ended up very badly for them. But Simo didn't
take part in the Continuation War. He went home and
he lived alone for the rest of his life. He
was a moose hunter and a dog breeder. He had
his dogs that he loved. He was a great hero
(47:35):
to his people, and he just kind of he did
the Cincinnatus thing and just went home to his farm
and retired, and he lived to be ninety seven years old.
He died like in the last decade, I believe.
Speaker 2 (47:46):
Good for him.
Speaker 1 (47:47):
And yeah, so that's the story of Simo Hea, the
White Death and his exploits fighting the Soviet Union in
the Winter War.
Speaker 2 (47:56):
Yeah, and what are the takeaways? One propaganda is a
real thing, and two there are circumstances in which it's
okay to wear white after labor Day. Ah.
Speaker 1 (48:07):
Yeah, that's a good point. Hete to do that. I
think we can leave it there. Okay, all right, thank
you guys so much as always for listening to us,
and we really hope you enjoyed this and we look
forward to you seeing you on the next one.
Speaker 2 (48:24):
Stay Badass. Badass of the Week is an iHeartRadio podcast
produced by High five Content. Executive producers are Andrew Jacobs, Me,
Pat Larish, and my co host Ben Thompson. Writing is
by me and Ben. Story editing is by Ian Jacobs
Brandon Phibbs. Mixing and music and sound design is by
(48:48):
Jude Brewer. Special thanks to Noel Brown at iHeart. Badass
of the Week is based on the website Badass of
Theweek dot com, where you can read all sorts of
stories about badasses. If you want to reach out with questions, ideas,
You can email us at Badass podcast at badassoftheweek dot com.
(49:10):
If you like the podcast, subscribe, follow, listen, and tell
your friends and your enemies if you want as We'll
be back next week with another one. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts.
Badass of the Week is an iHeartRadio podcast produced by
High five Content January nineteen forty. It is a dark, cold,
snowy evening in the bombed out forests of Coola, Finland.
Lines of dark figures move through the shattered tree line
Russian soldiers pressing forward despite heavy fire from the lines
(00:23):
of finished trenches before them. Artillery, machine guns and screams
of soldiers echo through the night. On a snowy embankment
high above the battlefield, a lone sniper lays a heavily
worn bolt action rifle into a narrow notch on the
snow bank he carved the position days ago. He is
(00:44):
dressed in white from head to toe, including a white
hood and a thick white wool ski mask that covers
his face. You cannot see his breath, even though temperatures
in this icy war zone are well below freezing. He
lies almost completely motionless, invisible amid the snow that covers
everything around him. He aims down the iron sights of
(01:05):
his weapon towards a small squad of Russian troops maneuvering
around the flank of the defenders below. He takes a
deep breath, chambers around and squeezes the trigger, unleashing a
deadly shot, and then another, and another and another. His
name is Simoheya, the White Death, and he's not only
(01:27):
the deadliest man in Finland, he might just be the
deadliest sniper in all of history. Hello, and welcome back
to Badass of the Week. My name is Ben Thompson
and I am here as always with my co host,
doctor Pat Larish. Pat, how's it going for you?
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Okay? How are you, Ben?
Speaker 1 (01:49):
I'm doing okay.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Yeah, you know, we're here telling our stories and I'm
thinking about an earlier episode we did on the Valkyries
and the Amazons and the power of propaganda and how
mystique can accrue to people, like individuals or a group
of people. You know.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Yeah, the propaganda of the Valkyries and the Amazons was
very powerful, right. Did the Greeks believe that the Amazons
were real? Do you think were they kind of like
a I.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Think so, yeah, I think so. I think they believed
that they were real, but that they were kind of
remote and so potentially kind of different from the normal
course of events.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
But if your ship got blown off course, there was
a chance you could run into them.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. It was part of the world. It
was part of the world that was way out there,
but it was still part of the world.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Yeah. And as much as we like to think of
the valkyries as being mythological figures, which they are, right,
they're lightning death goddesses that fly through the night sky
on winged horses and shoot lightning bolts out of their spears,
But the Vikings also believed that that was real, like
(03:03):
that is you know, that was part of their religion,
was that when you die, these valkyries take you to Valhalla. So,
you know, as wild and out there as it seems
to us, is this kind of fantasy thing, something you
only see in like an opera or like a fantasy novel.
They believed there was a chance they were going to
run into them one day, and the Amazon's is the same.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
And that has power, it does.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
And even you know, even today and kind of what
we're going to talk about today, the propaganda is maybe
even more prevalent nowadays than it was back then, when
we're kind of bombarded with information. I think about the
beginnings of the Ukraine War. I'm working on a book
on the Ukraine War right now, and I'm reminded of
the Ghost of Kiev.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Oh yeah, the Ghost of Ciev.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
Yeah, it was like a fighter pilot. We're using footage
from a video game, but it was they were showing
this fighter pilot flying over key you shooting down all
these Russian Su twenty sevens MiGs and stuff, and that
was very powerful. People were very you know, kind of
mobilized at the beginning of the war that like, oh,
you know, this guy's out there and he's doing this
badass stuff. I almost wrote an article about him until
(04:11):
I realized it wasn't real.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
Oh yeah, yeah. I saw the memes circulating and it's like, wow,
who is this? Like I was psyched over here, you know,
on another continent.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Yeah yeah, And I mean, you know, the Russian warship
go fuck yourself guy, Like they put him on a
postage stamp and like he just said like fuck you
to a warship and then basically, you know, they surrendered,
they lost that battle, but that guy is like a
national hero in Ukraine and that made like the meme
circuit as well. And so yeah, I mean, propaganda is powerful.
(04:45):
It's it's demoralizing to the enemy and it's inspiring to
the Allies. I mean, there's an argument to be made
that the Ukraine War lasts ten days if Vladimir Zelenski
doesn't make a thirty second TikTok video in front of
the capitol on the night of the attack, right like
you couldn't, that's an argument to be made for that. Yeah,
(05:05):
we're gonna deal with what we're talking about today is
also fairly propaganda forward. We're going to go back a
little bit. We're gonna go back a little bit in
time to a man. He's not the Ghost of Kiev,
but he is the White Death, which is also a
pretty badass nickname. Yes, we're going to talk about a
guy named Stimilhaya, who was a Finnish guy who was
(05:29):
a sniper who fought the Russians when they invaded his country.
And as successful as he was on the battlefield, and
we'll get into all of that, he was also very
successful as a propaganda tool in the same way the
Russians did later with vasili Zeitsev and some of the
other characters they had. We'll get into all that in
a minute. But what I want to leave with going
into the commercial break here is a propaganda phrase that
(05:50):
was circulating amongst the Finnish people as their country was
being invaded by Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union in
the winter of nineteen thirty nine. The Russians are so
many and our country is so small. Where will we
find space to bury them all? In the winter of
(06:19):
nineteen thirty nine, Joseph Stalin and the fula might of
the Soviet Union invade the small Scandinavian country of Finland
in what is known pat as the Winter War.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Yes, and this is coming out of the Molotova Rippentrough Pact,
which is a pact named for the foreign ministers of
Nazi Germany and the USSR. It was a non aggression pact.
It was signed in August of nineteen thirty nine, and
then in September both countries, instead of aggressing each other,
(06:55):
invade Poland.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
It was the one thing they could both agree on,
was let's get these Poles. Yes.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Yeah. And then in November of that year, despite the
fact that there is this little, you know, non aggression
treaty out there, Russia invades Finland.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Yeah, And the non aggression pact was was let's not
attack each other, right, was just kind of like Yeah,
let's divide up all this land that's between our two countries.
You take Czechoslovakia, we'll take Finland. We'll divide Poland down
the middle.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Yeah, okay, but.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
It was supposed to be a walk in the park.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
It was supposed to be. And what does it look
like from the Finns perspective, Well, the Finns had thirty
two tanks and one hundred and fourteen aircraft for the
whole country, for the whole country. Now contrast this with
Russians who had, you know, about five thousand tanks and
three thousand airplanes.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
That's way more.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
That's a lot.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Yeah, that's a lot more. That's more than thirty two.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
Yeah, that's more than thirty two. It's more than one
hundred fourteen.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
And I'm I'm not sure that, like, you know, I
don't know if the Finns were I don't know what
the technology difference between the tanks. But yeah, it doesn't
matter if you have really bad stuff. Five thousand tanks
against thirty two is you know, you have to really
mess up.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Yeah, and Poland had fallen and okay, yes, there are
ostensible reasons for the war. Leningrad used to be known
as Saint Petersburg. It's twenty miles from the border, and
they wanted to border. They are like a buffer between
them and Finland. When Finland said no, they attacked.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Yeah, the Russians were kind of like, you know, your
borders a little too close to our capital, so just
give us this big chunk of land here in. Finland
was like no, and Russia was like, yeah, this is
an insult to our country. Five thousand tangs go.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
So obviously Finland has to do something about this, and they,
you know, put out a draft. Everyone's being called up.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Including including a thirty four year old farmer named Simo
Heeya So. Simo Heeya So He was born December seventeenth,
nineteen oh five, in a part of Finland called Karelia.
We're not talking about Han Solo's home planet. It's Karelia
with a K, and it's near the border with Russia.
It's actually one of the lands that was probably going
(09:24):
to be seated to Russia. It was one of the
ones that Russia had demanded. So if if Finland had
just given them Russia the land that they had asked for,
Simo would be a Russian citizen now or I guess
a Soviet citizen. He's also I mean his farm puts
his farm kind of on the front line of this war.
The Russians are you know, he can they're coming into
(09:45):
his county, right. Yeah, he is a veteran. He's thirty four,
which is older for a serviceman to be drafted in,
but Finland at this time and I think still to
day has compulsory military service. So he joined the local
militia in nineteen twenty two and he did a little
two year stint with the Finnish Army. He was assigned
(10:07):
to bicycle Battalion two.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
So I'd just like to give a shout out to
all of our listeners who are cyclists.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Yes, there was bicycle infantry. It was a thing in
World War one and two. Yes, easier than a horse,
I guess. So. Simo is a little over five feet
tall and he did his term with the Finnish Army.
He reached the rank of corporal.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Good for him. Yeah, and also I'd like to give
a shout out to people who are short, who are
barely over five feet tall, including your humble podcast co
host here.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
You know, there are things that it is a huge
advantage to be short. Naval service, like tank you know,
the tanks for meet small and smaller people operate them
because it's good to keep a low profile. Motorcycle, racing,
horse jockeys. There's a lot of things in which anything
that involves like speed or weight, like you know, short
(11:02):
people have an advantage. And sniping, apparently because he's a
Simo is going to be a very famous sniper. Yes,
and he has a low profile. Literally there's a footless
of him to shoot than there is of other people
then there is of an ivan drago or somebody exactly.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Yeah. So when he's not serving in the Finnish Army,
he's living peacefully in his farming village not far from
the Russian border. He's farming, probably hunting also, because that's
a thing you did. He was called up.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Yeah, and so he is. You know, he's a he's
kind of a Finnish mountain man, right, he lives if
you want to picture like white mountains. Finland has always
had kind of had this great reputation of being excellent skiers.
They always do well in the Winter Olympics. The Vikings
the Finish are a little different from the Norwegians and
(11:51):
the Swedes, and the Vikings in those regions referred to
the people who lived in Finland as ski fins ski
fin because they could ski shooting arrow at the same time,
and that was very impressive to the Vikings. So you
want to picture like white snow capped mountains and strong
winds and evergreen trees that are covered in snow, and
(12:13):
this little five foot tall Finnish mountain man, I'm picturing
him like shopping logs with a nax, you know. And
he's got some kind of like animal pelts in his house,
his little log cabin. I don't know about any of
this for sure. I'm making the whole thing up off
the top of my head, but this is kind of
the vibe of Simohaya. He's got excellent vision, good survival skills,
(12:35):
he's skis, he's a good hunter. But one thing that
came up during his time in the Finnish military is
that he had an excellent ability to estimate distance. To like,
and this is a thing that I suck at personally,
but to kind of look at an object and tell
exactly how far away it is, which is a very
useful thing for shooting. But it's not not a you
(12:58):
know it's and for probably a number of other things,
but it's not. It's not a skill that I've developed
very well.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
But he evidently did.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
He did. Yeah, he was an excellent shooter. He had
the you know, breath control and manual control, hand control
and estimating the distance is another big part of that.
And one of his former commanders when he was in
the bicycle Battalion said that Simo once was able to
hit at target sixteen times at one hundred and fifty
meters in under a minute. Wow. Yeah, one hundred fifty
(13:26):
meters out shot at sixteen times in a minute.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Wow. So that's less than five seconds per round.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Yeah, and that's per shot. Yeah, ridiculous, that's very difficult.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Yeah. Bam bam, bam, bam bam. Yeah. And what does
one hundred and fifty meters look like. That's like roughly
five hundred feet.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
It's further than you'd think.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Yeah. Yeah, I guess if we're thinking in terms of
baseball stadiums, because of course they have baseball stadiums all
over the landscape in Finland, it's being like, say, ten
rows back in the outfield and trying to hit the
batter with a paintball go or trying to throw a
strike from there. I mean, it probably depends on which
stadium in particular you're talking about, anyway, but this is
a this is a non trivial distance. This is a
(14:09):
big deal.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean try to picture being ten
rows back at Yankee Stadium and trying to hit the
batter with the paintbal done. Yeah, And now he's got
a bunch of Soviet Union soldiers marching through his backyard
and he doesn't like it.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
Get off my lawn.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
He's got a military experience. He's got his old rifle
that's hanging above the wooden door to his log cabin.
And when the war starts, reserves get called up, he
grabs his old basic infantry mosen Negatt rifle and falls
in a Finnish army and he's assigned to a unit
(14:44):
that is led by a guy named arna'sti uti line.
I mean, you might have to do this one. I
don't know if I can manage it.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Arna utu line in.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Arna utah linean. See it sounds so pretty when you
say it, but looking at this it's ju he I.
I'm not even gonna spell it. Looking at this name
it's it seems unpronounceable when you say you to line
it and that sounds so melodic. Is so nice, right,
it's so easy to ligne in, no problem.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
And so this guy with a melodic name, what do
we know about him?
Speaker 1 (15:16):
He's the butcher of Morocco.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
WHOA, that sounds not melodic. So that means he served
in the French Foreign Legion in Morocco and he's got
a lot of experience under his belt. When the war starts,
he's badass in his own right, extremely so put down
some rebels, even earns French citizenship for his troubles.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
Yeah, yeah, so he was he had served in the
French Foreign Legion, which you know Finland when the war starts.
Kind of like what was happening with Ukraine when the
war started. Here is like they're desperate for veterans. They
anybody who has any kind of military service. That's a
huge advantage, right, even the one year in the militia
is an advantage for Cimo over some of these other
people who you don't have time to train these guys
(15:59):
how to you know, march in order and carry a
rifle and reload it and clean it. Right, you got
to put these guys right out there to go fight. Yeah, yeah,
arnauta line and he had served in the French Foreign
Legion in North Africa and he had become an officer there.
And if you serve in the French Foreign Legion for
I believe it's ten years, you become a French citizen.
(16:21):
So he had done that. But he goes in and
he was living in Finland at the time, and he
joins up and Simo ends up falling in with him.
The other thing with Arna is that he was a
very powerful propaganda guy. You don't get a nickname like
the Butcher of Morocco unless you kind of are willing
to play into that a little bit. And he's part
of the reason talking about propaganda, he's part of the
(16:43):
reason why Simo is probably as big of a deal
as he is. And we'll get into some of that
in a little bit. So one of the things that
Arna utah Linen is famous for in the Winter War,
he's a big hero in Finland. So he is in
command of a region called and Cola is kind of
the crux of the Soviet advance. This is where the
(17:06):
Fins have to hold or they're going to lose the region,
and he very famously when asked, like, you know, will
Cola hold, he said, quote, it will hold unless the
orders are to run away.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
So they're going to stick to Cola. They're going to
protect Colaw. They're going to hold off all of these
invaders unless the orders actually come from above saying okay,
get out of there. And that's the only thing that
will make them stop protecting Colaw is if they get orders.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
There's some nuance in the phrase, right, like you know,
it will hold unless the orders are to run away. Yeah,
I don't think the nuance in the original finish kind
of translates into the English.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
No, I think we're missing a.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Lot unless the orders are to literally run away, Yes,
the only way we leave.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
Maybe he's thinking it's not likely that those orders of
that nature are going to come down the way line.
So we're holding on to Colah. We're holding on to Cola. Yeah,
Keste co Cola. And then what is uta Linan's answer?
Cola will hold unless the orders are to run killer
Keste last Carcun New York Seman or something like that, allegedly.
(18:18):
So I'm doing my best.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
So Arnie utiliten is at Cola and he is there
facing five thousand Soviet tanks with his thirty five tanks.
But the one thing he has on his side that
the Russians don't have is Simo, heya and Simo. You
know the mountain man, the thirty four year old, five
foot tall mountain man from you know, the middle of nowhere, Finland.
(18:43):
He's a trained guy.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
Who can shoot a target from way the.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
Hell out there exactly from one hundred and fifty yards
out sixteen times and under a minute. He is really
good at fighting. It turns out he was really good
at hunting animals on his farm for sustenance, but he's
also really good at shooting Russians attacking his hometown. It
kind of helps his cause a little bit that the
Russians at this point they're very bad at fighting. There's
(19:12):
a lot of Russians, and there's several reasons for this.
I think a Russian person is good at fighting. I
don't want to I don't want to disparage the people
of Russia because I really do not have any interest
in getting into a fistfight with a Russian man. In
real life, they're very tough, very brave, but the organizational
(19:33):
structure of their army was extremely poor. Stalin is very
famous for purging anybody he considered a threat, which was
anybody who had any power or understanding of the military.
He had spent several years before this just executing any
(19:53):
military officer who not only was he thought was like disloyal,
but just was even remote competent. So the entire army
is replaced by yes, men who are just totally afraid
of him.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Yes, men who are inexperience, inexperienced.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
Yes, Yeah, here's a great example of how unprepared the
Russians were. Like when that non aggression pack was signed,
the Russians and the Germans were just kind of like, well,
we'll just divide all of this Eastern europe land up
between us and make our own little empires and just
promise not to backstab each other in the process. But
while the Germans were very effective at this, the Russian
(20:32):
soldiers fighting in Finland, do you remember we talked about
the white snow covered mountains and the white snow covered
trees and all of that.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
Very peaceful, very white.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
The Russians were not given white camouflage. They were given
their traditional green uniforms.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
Hmm. Yeah, we were talking, and there's a particular garb
that is useful when you're a soldier in a white,
snow covered forest.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
Yes, and it's not and that green not green. It's
not forest green, olive drab, it's not green. They also
weren't given cold weather gear, even though they're fighting in
the winter.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
You think that would be a no brainer.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
But yeah, you'd think a jacket, okay, even one of
those you know, fuzzy Russian hats with the flaps something
like that.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
So it's just kind of hitting me, like, what were
they thinking.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
They're Russians, it's cold in Russia.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
They know how to do cold.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
Most of these troops were conscripts who were brought in
from Siberia. Should be used to like, you know.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
Okay, okay, okay. So on the one side, we've got
some guys who are a little bit inexperienced, relatively speaking,
wearing green and maybe not completely layered up against the cold.
And then on the other side, which is the Finnish side,
we've got.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
We've got guys in white camouflage. I mean, they're also
in experience. The difference here is the Russians are largely conscripts,
which means they were forced into service here and now
they're attacking Finland. They don't really want to do They
just want to get home to their families. They're not
well trained, they're not well equipped. They don't have good weapons,
(22:07):
they don't have enough ammon, they don't have cold weather gear,
they don't have white uniforms. The Fins also, for the
most part, are also inexperienced. But they are fighting at
home and they're on their home turf. Yes, and they're
highly motivated. Yes, And they have cold weather gear and
they have skis. We talked about the ski Fins before.
(22:30):
They're very good skiers. And the Russians are stuck. They
have those five thousand tanks and those three thousand aircraft
or however many we were talking about, And.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
How do these tanks move through a monitary forest.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
On the roads. So they have to use the roads,
which kind of let's you know where they're coming from. Yes,
they don't move through the big high snow banks. The
airplanes aren't super effective because there's a lot of cloud
cover because it's snowy and gray. And when they look
down from above trying to drop bombs on people, they
see white and they see trees, and they see clouds
(23:03):
and they see white uniforms on white snow and they
are not super effective. Yeah, temperatures here kind of like
you know, it's the winter war. Russia chose to attack
in the winter, the non aggression practice sign in August
and the attack in the winter, and temperatures get down
to negative forty.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Negative forty celsius or.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
Fahrenheit celsius and fahrenheit. This is a weird spot where
it's the same. Negative forty is the same for both
celsius and fahrenheit. Super cold, super cold in both super cold.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Yes, let's take away, yes, yeah, And what's Simo up to.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
He is defending his home. He's a little guy and
we have to picture him kind of wearing all white,
and he wore a white balat Clavis so like like
a bank robber ski mask with the eyes and the
mouth cut out, all white. He's outside his hometown. The
Russians are advancing on his house. Personally, he's got the
hood up on his jacket. He's got his old rifle,
(23:59):
his old mosen N.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Eight, so it's old, but he's using it.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
He knows it. He didn't want any of the newer stuff.
He knows this gun and he wants to use it.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
It's his old friend.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
He's using his iron sights. He doesn't use a telescopic sight.
It was reliable, he'd mastered it. It's the kind of
the stock rifle for this time period. You know. He's
kind of perched up on a snow bank looking down
at just this row of there's tanks, but it's just
it's guys in green uniforms who don't know what they're doing.
Walk in on the white background. They might as well
(24:31):
be wearing day glow colors. Right. Yeah, he's got his
white on. He's sneaking through the woods, laying there sometimes
for days, waiting for people to come in to range
for him.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
I'm imagining the breath coming out of his mouth making
those clouds.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
No, because he put snow in his mouth. He would
eat snow. Oh, clever, lower the body temperature in his
mouth so he wouldn't exhale smoke, because that was how
he would catch other people. He would catch enemy snipers
because he could see their breath.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Clever.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Same thing with the telescopic sights. Nowadays, telescopic sites have
technology on them that they don't reflect. But in nineteen
thirty nine. Telescopic site allows you to magnify five x
ten x twenty x. But but if the light hits
it wrong, it's going to reflect the light back.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Right.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
It's a piece of glass. Yeah, yeah, yeah, So he
was able to catch guys that way too, and he
just he learned what not to do and then he
didn't do it. He's on this berm. He's watching these
guys come along. He's watching the tanks roll and these
guys move on foot in front of him. A lot
of guys right, and he's here at Cola. He's at
the center of all of this. He's got a water
(25:41):
bottle that he keeps a canteen on him, a metal
water bottle, and he unscrews it and he pours the
water onto the snow in front of where he's going
to put his rifle.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
Why is that a good luck offering or something.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
No, it makes the snow in front of him wet,
so that when he fires the rifle, it doesn't kick
up a bunch of snow, you know, the recoil of
the rifle. He's using smokeless powder, but the rifle will
kick out a puff of puff of snow. So that
will give him away. Yeah, and he's trying not to
do that, clever. Enemies are moving, the tanks are moving,
(26:13):
and there's Russian artillery. There's artillery from both sides firing over,
mostly Russian. But he waits for the sounds of the
artillery and sitting here, he's lining up these guys. He's
got him into sights and he waits for the whistle
of the artillery shell of an incoming round, and he
tries to fire when the artillery shell goes off, so
then his gun shot is masked by the explosion of
(26:34):
the artillery.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
He's put some thought into this.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
Yes, yeah, he is good at this, right, and a
lot of what he does ends up being the things
that are taught to people who want to go into
sniper programs in the future. So he hears the artillery
and he fires. And this guy can shoot sixteen times
in a minute and hit targets f one hundred and
fifty meters out and he can get one or two
(26:57):
shots off with an artillery round.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
You know, around this time, the Russians are shooting, and
there was at one point during the war, especially in
the Kola region, they were saying the Russians were firing
forty thousand rounds of artillery a day. The Finns could
manage one thousand back in return. But that's a lot
of opportunities to fire. And so he sits there and
he'll fire, He fires seven or eight rounds, and then
he moves to a different position. And he has prepared
(27:20):
all of these positions the night before, so he knows,
he knows where he's going, he knows where he's going
to fire, where he's going to fall back to if
they spot him, and where he's going to move to
if they don't spot him. And he's just kind of
taken these guys out as there. I mean, there's no
other way around it. He's extremely effective at taking out
large numbers of enemy infantry. And there's a number of
(27:43):
advantages to this, not just kind of you know, eliminating
enemy infantry is is its own advantage in military maneuvering,
but taking out enemy infantry is its own advantage on
a battlefield. But the other thing is there are Russians.
They don't know how many guys are out there. The gunfire,
they don't see the shooter. Several guys are going down,
(28:04):
killed or wounded, or injured, and they don't know what
they're up against. They might think they're up against one
hundred guys instead of just one. So he by himself
can turn back advances by the enemy or flanking maneuvers
or things like that, because he gets out there and
he starts shooting these guys or shooting at these guys.
Even if he misses, it's it's still a data point
that a bullet hit the ground over here. They think
(28:26):
they're under fire by a larger group of guys and
they fall back. These guys are conscripts and they want
to go home.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
Yeah, they psyck themselves out.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
So he becomes a hero to his people and a
ghost to his enemies, and they call him Bailes Smirt,
the White Death. He will become the most famous Finnish
soldier of this war, and to the Russians he is
he's a boogeyman. And we're going to talk a little
bit more about the effects of that after this break.
(29:05):
So it is the winter of nineteen thirty nine, moving
into nineteen forty and Baylis Smurt the White Death is
now a very famous name all across Finland, both for
the Allies of the Finns and their enemies. Arnie Uta
Lynen is really hammering this home on the propaganda front.
(29:26):
And there are stories of Simoea the White Death. He's
got grenades and a rifle. Sometimes he's got a submachine gun.
Sometimes he's fighting on the line. Sometimes he's the loner.
And their stories coming out she shot twenty five people
in a day, you know, keeping the baseball analogy going.
That's an entire baseball team, including the bullpen and the bench.
(29:48):
And these stories kind of going coming out in the
newspaper and they're inspiring, and you know, Baylis Smurt the
White Death, which Bayls Smurt also means. It's also the
name that the Finns and the Russians gave to like
a really bad frosts that kills people like, so it said,
there's a double meaning here, not just the White Death,
but it's the word for a specific type of frost,
(30:08):
like flash frost that kills people, like what.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
Happens if you go around in the woods in Finland
in the winter. Yeah, and if you're not careful, if
you're wearing bright green for example, like a.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
Russian soldier, or if you're not wearing cold weather gear
like a Russian soldier.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
Well, yeah, yeah, Bayless smirt, Yeah yeah, he could say
he's awarded a custom rifle by the commander of the
Finnish Army, Carl Gustav Emil von Mannerheim.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
There's a lot of propaganda it really, we're talking Ghost
of Kiev. If we were talking Russian warship, go fuck yourself,
Baylis Smurt is powerful news for people at home to
be motivated. Hey, maybe you know our country is so
big in the Russians are so many where we find
place to bury them all. There was a rhyme there
(30:58):
that I missed when I recounted this just now. But
this is inspiring to these people. Yeah, and it's demoralized
into the Russians. The Soviets are. They're moving in here
and they're they're taking the heavy line. They were supposed
to stomp Finland. They were supposed to show up here
and crush Finland and take it, and they are kind
of getting their butts kicked at Cola. They can't take it.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
Yeah, Finland's stomping back and you're talking about propaganda, and
this is making me think of the so called white Tights, Yes,
which is a well, I don't want to say myth,
but a story that's going around, and the white tights
are supposedly, allegedly a group of women snipers who wear
(31:44):
you know, white athletic gear so they can blend in
because as we know, white is a good camouflage color.
And these stories have been going around among Russian soldiers
and also other soldiers in the area since at least
World War In World War Two, there's a little bit
of a historical basis for this. The Soviets had a
(32:04):
special school for women's snipers and they trained about two
thousand women.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
They had some very effective ones too, I mean Milan Paviachenko.
She was a Ukrainian woman who fought for the Soviets
in the war and she was very successful in Stalingrad
and stuff.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
Yeah, so there's a precedent for this story, myth, and
there's a mystique. The story is that allegedly there are
women who are super athletic, they're good at skiing, and
of course they're klad an all white athletic gear and
maybe it's you know, sleek, form fitting athletic year it's
(32:40):
so why I call them white tights.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
I'm sure it is when you when they're thinking about it,
I'm picturing biathlon.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
Yeah, you ever watched biathlon, It's like one of my
favorite things to watch in the middle of the night
on the Winter Olympics.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
Yeah, And I mean this is where the biathlon comes from.
You ski and then you pause and manage your breath
and you shoot. And those are the two two skills,
which might seem like a very random combination. But now
that we know the story of Simojeha, and now that
we're looking at the story of the White Tights, it
makes sense. These are the skills you need if you're
(33:11):
going to be a sniper in say the Finished Forest,
for example. And so these these White Tights, these sniper
ladies will lie in wait for their marks, who are
often Russian officers, and when the moment is right, they
will deal swift death from several hundred meters away. And
as we've seen in the case of sim Ojea, apparently
(33:33):
humans can shoot effectively from several hundred meters if they're
good at it.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
Yeah, nowadays you're kind of like the expected range for
a sniper is eight hundred meters with a modern rife form.
This is not that this is World War two stuff.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
Right, and sometimes allegedly, and I say allegedly, because this
is how the stories go. They will sometimes torture their prey,
like maybe they'll shoot a Russian soldier's right hand so
he can't fire his weapon. But the White leave their
calling card, as it were. Sometimes they hack into radio
frequencies and they allegedly send messages about what they'll do
(34:06):
to their targets once they catch them. And allegedly many
of these White Tights were former biathlawn champions. And okay,
given the skills you need in a biathlon, okay, you know,
but it doesn't mean that everyone who competes in a
biathlon is necessarily a sniper, right then.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
Yeah, exactly. And you know, I've seen, I've heard some
of these stories of White Tights. I think I wrote
about them in one of my books and he did. Yeah,
they would do stuff like you know, the stories would go.
And these are you know, they're kind of ghosts as well,
and you know, they're probably myth that was perpetuated amongst
the ranks of the Soviets. We do know that there
were women's snipers in real life and Sarajevo and the
(34:45):
Soviet Union Armies and stuff. But yeah, they would like
they'd ambush a patrol and shoot the lead guy in
a way that he wouldn't die. They just like shoot
him in the balls or something right, like something gruesome,
and he'd be laying there. And then you know, in
the stories, like you said, she would broadcast to those
Russian troops on a secure military frequency like hey, why
(35:07):
don't you go get your friend, he's dying out there.
Leave that guy kind of screaming out in the open,
and shoot anybody else that came out. Horrible stuff. But
these are stories that start getting told among soldiers who
are already scared and cold and you know, embattled, and
you know, it's not good for morale for stories like
(35:27):
this to be circulating, kind of like Baylis murt as well, exactly.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
Yeah, yeah, and these stories keep coming up. These stories
were circulating during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the
nineteen eighties, They were circulating during the South Asesia campaign
in two thousand and eight, and there the White Tighter
said to be fighting along the Georgians. You know, so
this is a story that has legs. It's a story
(35:54):
about people who are feared, whether or not they're one
hundred percent accurate or not, and there's a real fear
of the sniper who shoots from nowhere.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
Yeah, I think about Sniper Wolf from Metal Gear Solid.
I don't know if you've played any of the Metal
Gear Solid games, but Sniper Wolf is kind of a
quintessential White Tights type of person. Yeah, but that's kind
of the idea, and interestingly, like, yeah, it is kind
of they always are kind of from the Ukraine or
Baltic States regions, which you know, if I remember correctly,
(36:27):
is also where the Greeks thought the Amazons were. Okay, yeah,
we kind of looked like Valkyrie isn't from northern Scithia
a little bit. I'm reaching for connections here.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
Well, these stories have ways of lasting, and you and
I both know that historically there have been women who
have been amazingly good shots, and so there might be
some exaggeration, but there might also be a basis for
the exaggeration. So yeah, and you know, these stories have
real world consequences. Since these stories are floating around, sometimes
(37:08):
the enemy will use them as maybe an excuse to
arrest women who are maybe just ordinary rank and file
service women or just ordinary women on the suspicion of
being snipers. In twenty fourteen, a Ukrainian service woman named
Nadiya Savchenko was captured and described by her captors as
(37:30):
a well trained sniper. Allegedly, she had a map with
positions where she could hide and with good positions to
set up her rifle. The people who interrogated her operated
under the assumption that she was a sniper. Was she
really a sniper? Was this just sort of an opportunistic
sort of thing.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
You know, or like a witch hunty kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
Yeah, yeah, Yeah, you're.
Speaker 1 (37:52):
Ghosts already, so they Yeah, you find them if you're
looking for them.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
Yeah. So it's a persistent myth. And do we have
proof for the existence of the White Tights? Not? As such,
we have proof of the existence of the story of
the White Tights. It's a really effective piece of propaganda.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
Yeah, yeah, and you know it is. It's interesting. And
there are like, you know, like you said, I read
some story about some woman being drawn and quartered because
they thought she was a sniper, Like yeah, horrible things, right,
and you know, and these people are accused of doing
these horrible things and then they get treated horribly. I
don't know, where is just an awful brutal thing that
you never would want to experience, yes, in your life.
(38:33):
But that is kind of where we're at with Baylis
smurt as well. In nineteen forty Simo Hey As he's badass,
and the Russians want to get him, and they're willing
to use like extreme means to try to make that happen.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
And how do you use extreme means against like a
sniper who's dressed on white, who's a little over five.
Speaker 1 (38:54):
Feet and you don't know where he is or anything. Yeah,
they attack him with aircraft, they attack him with artillery mortars,
they send counter snipers out there to try to find them.
He of course takes out the counter snipers and the
artillery is kind of just shooting blindly. His positions are
pretty well prepared and they can't see him. But anytime
they suspect that he is there, and I imagine there
(39:14):
were many times in which he wasn't there that they
suspected he was there, they are kind of carpet bombing
any place that they think he might be hiding. They're
willing to commit large amounts of resources to get this
one five foot one guy with a wooden rifle. You
know and iron sights, and they are doing all kinds
(39:35):
of things to try to take this guy out. But
he's doing his thing. He's skiing and he's shooting, which
is what you said the white tights do. It's what
the ski fins did. It's a practice that dates back
to the Norse god Ruler, who was the god of
skiing and hunting, which is pretty cool. By athlon god,
(39:55):
ski and shoot at the same time. Yeah, biathlon god.
Speaker 2 (39:58):
Yeah, you describe people shooting a bow and arrow while
they're skiing, and I'm imagining that scene in one of
the Lord of the Rings movies where it's the Battle
of Helm's Deep and Lego Loss. The Elf is on
he's standing on someone's shield and.
Speaker 3 (40:16):
He's like he's skiing or like.
Speaker 2 (40:20):
Skateboarding honestly down some stairs and he's shooting his bow
and arrow and it was It's a pretty cool scene.
And I'm imagining people doing this in the forests of Finland.
Speaker 1 (40:30):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's totally it. I think you. Yeah,
I always think of it as surfing. Surfing, surfing the
shield down the stairs and shooting book. It's not easy.
You're moving. It's hard enough to shoot something when you're
standing still, but like, you know, to exert yourself to
the degree that skiing requires you to do. And this
is not like skiing at Whistler, right, this is backcountry
like hard skiing, like hard work while people are launching
(40:52):
artillery at you. You know, there's a lot of stuff
that has to happen here, and he's awesome at it.
He's he's like, in his own way, single handedly turning
the tide of the war and helping the Fins hold
off this Russian assault.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:07):
On March's second of nineteen forty, Simo Heea is in
his position. He is firing down into a group of
Russians and they guess where he is. They return fire
on him. He's trying to fight his way out, but
he is caught in the jaw with an explosive bullet. Yeah,
(41:30):
like they had these. That is a bullet that detonates
on impact with your face. Yeah, And he blows off
a big portion of his jaw and he goes down
and the guys who are with him are horrified. Right,
my god, they got him. He's laying there, he's not moving.
They drag him over. The medics come and drag him
back to the hospital tent. They throw him in there
(41:51):
with the rest of the dead bodies. Yeah, he's kind
of lined up as he's not going to make it.
Half his face is gone, this guy, you know, that's it.
Billis is no more. But then his leg starts twitching
and it turns out he's not dead. Whoa he is.
He's in a coma, and he wakes eleven days later,
(42:14):
and the war's over when he wakes up. Whoa, he
misses the last eleven days of the war.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
So he does eventually recover from that explosive bullet to
the jaw.
Speaker 1 (42:24):
He does, so he lives. He goes in a coma.
He's pretty horribly scarred for the rest of his life.
But you know, it takes fourteen months and twenty six
surgeries for him to recover from the injury. Yeah. But
while he's laid up in the hospital, he wrote a
letter to the local newspaper that they needed to retract
(42:48):
the death notice for Bayliss Smurt, which I love.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
Oh, I'm thinking of that line attributed to Mark Twain.
Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated exactly so.
Speaker 1 (43:03):
The Winter War ends in March of nineteen forty and
while Stalin and the Soviets acquire twenty two thousand square
miles of Finland, it cost them dearly. They lost somewhere
in the order of three to four hundred thousand soldiers
in conscripts. And while I'm sure Stalin was able to
use his propaganda to spin that as a Soviet victory,
(43:25):
it was not what he was expecting when he moved
his guys into Finland. Yeah, simo, heya. He survives the war.
He receives five medals for valor, and one of those
medals is that he wins like every medal that you
can get for being a soldier in Finland, but one
that he always really valued was the Kola Cross, which
(43:45):
was only given to people who performed heroic acts in
that battle, which was, and I would wagers still is
the single most famous battle in the history of Finland.
Speaker 2 (43:57):
Yeah, so this is a great moment of Finish national pride, exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
And yeah, he's promoted from corporal to he was still
a corporal while he was doing all of this. He's
promoted to second lieutenant and at the end of the
war he is He's credited officially as as killing five
hundred and five Russian soldiers in the war. Some numbers
say five hundred and forty two. I don't really like
(44:23):
the keeping a body count metric of this. I think
that it's you know, yeah, I think it's it's grim,
like it is. I mean, not that anything talking about
war and snipers in general isn't grim, but it's it's
grim to try to count bodies. And also, like you know,
almost certainly these numbers are always exaggerated, right.
Speaker 2 (44:43):
Yeah, but it just goes to show you that stories.
Speaker 1 (44:47):
There is evolved, and it's not a video game. Right,
there's not like some AI keeping track of this stuff.
You don't get plus thirty five points. It's not call
of duty, right, Like they're human beings, right, They've got
moms and wives and whatever, right, and yeah and dogs. Yeah.
And Simo these numbers, for these numbers, he's credited was
shooting more, having more confirmed sniper kills than any other
(45:10):
soldier in the history of warfare. But Simo he didn't
really like talking about it. And I can imagine why.
Speaker 2 (45:17):
Because half of his jaw was blown off.
Speaker 1 (45:20):
That could be one reason. But really there's a quote
from him he says, I did what I was told
to do as well as I could. There would be
no Finland unless everyone else had done the same.
Speaker 2 (45:32):
I imagine this was a written quote, but that is an
incredibly badass thing to say and very true to Unfortunately,
all of war soldiers do what they're told and they
do as well as they can because it's life and death.
There's no time in war for any less than your best.
Speaker 1 (45:52):
Yeah, And that's kind of how he viewed his life.
What he did wasn't for glory or fame. It was
just to do as well as he could and to
protect his home and the others around it him. He
was a very powerful piece of propaganda and he was
instrumental in helping Finland survive as a country, and it's
part of how they made their way through the Winter War.
And I think that's more valuable a contribution than you know,
(46:14):
carving Tally marks on the butt of your rifle. You know, Yes,
he went home and he ended up missing the Continuation War,
so when you know, we had that non aggression pact
we talked about before once and some people credit the
Winter War for this, but like the idea in that
scenario is that Hitler saw how poorly Russia performed attacking
(46:39):
Finland and was like, actually, maybe these guys suck and
maybe I can take them. So he attacked Russia and
when he did, the Finns joined him. They they tried
to retake the areas that had been lost to the
Soviet Union.
Speaker 2 (46:57):
Right, which it's understandable.
Speaker 1 (46:59):
They lost twenty two thousand square miles to the Russians.
They didn't have any love for the Russians. Germany was
attacking them. Germany was like, hey, do you want some
guns and money to help you retake your land? And
they said yes, and they joined the Germans in the war.
Speaker 2 (47:12):
Yeah, when you put it that.
Speaker 1 (47:13):
Way, Seimo didn't participate in that phrase of the war.
It didn't work out well for Finland, as with Germany
again ended up very badly for them. But Simo didn't
take part in the Continuation War. He went home and
he lived alone for the rest of his life. He
was a moose hunter and a dog breeder. He had
his dogs that he loved. He was a great hero
(47:35):
to his people, and he just kind of he did
the Cincinnatus thing and just went home to his farm
and retired, and he lived to be ninety seven years old.
He died like in the last decade, I believe.
Speaker 2 (47:46):
Good for him.
Speaker 1 (47:47):
And yeah, so that's the story of Simo Hea, the
White Death and his exploits fighting the Soviet Union in
the Winter War.
Speaker 2 (47:56):
Yeah, and what are the takeaways? One propaganda is a
real thing, and two there are circumstances in which it's
okay to wear white after labor Day. Ah.
Speaker 1 (48:07):
Yeah, that's a good point. Hete to do that. I
think we can leave it there. Okay, all right, thank
you guys so much as always for listening to us,
and we really hope you enjoyed this and we look
forward to you seeing you on the next one.
Speaker 2 (48:24):
Stay Badass. Badass of the Week is an iHeartRadio podcast
produced by High five Content. Executive producers are Andrew Jacobs, Me,
Pat Larish, and my co host Ben Thompson. Writing is
by me and Ben. Story editing is by Ian Jacobs
Brandon Phibbs. Mixing and music and sound design is by
(48:48):
Jude Brewer. Special thanks to Noel Brown at iHeart. Badass
of the Week is based on the website Badass of
Theweek dot com, where you can read all sorts of
stories about badasses. If you want to reach out with questions, ideas,
You can email us at Badass podcast at badassoftheweek dot com.
(49:10):
If you like the podcast, subscribe, follow, listen, and tell
your friends and your enemies if you want as We'll
be back next week with another one. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts.
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