History is like the wheels on the bus ;)

So,

- invading a much smaller country that used to be yours
- motivated by a fear of enemies getting too close to the attacker's borders
- invasion based on outright wrong intel that created overly... optimistic expectations
- try to instigate the invaded people to be on your side, fail miserably
- enemy gets international volunteers and whatnot
- incompetent military leadership, mostly based on political reasons
- ... including following doomed "rush B" kinda plans, even when it should be obvious it won't work
- ... and pressure from the top to keep doing it, before other countries get too involved
- getting bogged in snow and mud
- major logistical nightmares
- ... including the enemy getting behind your lines and ambushing the supply convoys
- expensive tanks destroyed by cheap molotov cocktails
- ... and those tanks turn out to be nowhere near as great as previously propaganda made one believe
- using masses of poorly trained and unmotivated conscripts
- major morale problems, resulting in soldiers surrendering or running away
- ... and the enemy snipers don't really help with that morale problem
- talks of political purges
- has the nasty side-effect of telling everyone else on the globe, "wait, these guys are much weaker than we thought"
Etc.

Right, I'm talking about the Winter War (talvisota) :p

Those who don't learn history are doomed to repeat the year ;)

Well, to be fair, at least Stalin did manage to establish air supremacy from day zero. So, yeah, it's not an exact repeat. It's kinda like a Hollywood reboot: it's even worse than the original :p

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