Biathlon: Sisu

Some of you probably thought I was joking a few weeks back during the Winter Olympics when I said it was good seeing the Finns competing, given their history with Biathlon and the Russians.

I wasn't.

Just the other day I happened on an article illustrating my point. It discussed Simo Häyhä, a Finn credited with shooting "at least 700 men in less than 100 days" during the brief Finnish war with the Soviets early in WWII. He was so deadly that the Soviets dubbed him "The White Death," and he humiliated the Red Army despite their "cult of the sniper," or "sniperism." The Finns fought the Soviets to a standstill using light infantry on skis, unconventional warfare, sheer grit, and a willingness to fight in temperatures down to 40 or 50 degrees (fahrenheit) below zero.

I'd have to bone up on my tactical level military history, but if significant changes to Soviet sniper doctrine occurred between 1940 (when Häyhä was wreaking havoc) and 1942 (when Soviet snipers decimated the ranks and morale of the German armies at Stalingrad) then perhaps Häyhä is one of the great, uncredited heroes of Stalingrad. Perhaps he caused the Soviet Army to focus on developing a culture of marksmanship, which involves individualism and rewarding excellence in a way that would have gone very much against the political grain at that time.

Old School Biathletes