Tehtävätaktiikka suomalaisessa sotataidossa – myytti vai todellisuus?

Kirjoittajat

• Petteri Jouko

Abstrakti

This article seeks to study whether Auftragtaktik, Directive Control in Anglo-American nomenclature, was an essential part of Finnish warfare. The temporal focus is on two decades following the Second World War. The Finnish experience of the Second World War is in many ways controversial. Firstly, the tactical lessons of the Finnish Armed Forces were never systematically collected or analysed. Secondly, the experience concerning leadership provides us a rather confusing picture. The General Headquarters of Field Marshall Mannerheim, the Supreme Commander, exercised tight control of formations under its command. This took place especially during the first year of the Continuation War when the Finnish Army was on onslaught. On the other hand, the tactical handling or rather way of exercising command of formations was not openly criticised after the war. The tactical culture, however, slowly altered towards Auftragstaktik which includes elements of mutual trust, freedom of action in the battlefield, and ability to grasp the initiative. It is easy to claim that the existence of the main defence line in defensive posture restricted tactical thinking and also freedom of action, an essential element of Auftragstaktik. The main defence line, not only tied resources of the commander responsible for the defence, but also it narrowed tactical thinking. The experience of fighting the Soviet strategic offensive in summer 1944, changed the Finnish view of the battlefield. The Soviet attack was repulsed only after the main thrust had been worn down at deep area with large amount of friendly formations and fire massed at favourable terrain. This was the main lesson of the war. The only way to counter the deep attack, the operational feature of the Soviet Army, was the deep defence. In Finland, the deep defence took form in the territorial defence system which was intensively developed during the 1960s. The change, the new thinking emphasising deep defence and territorial defence, was at least indirectly interlinked with the development of directive control. There was no theoretical background behind this development, rather the war experience and pragmatic thinking, which really was the trademark of the time.