8 Shocking Crimes That Were Secretly Committed By Governments

5. The Soviets Bomb Their Own Town To Invade Finland

Not wanting to be outdone by their German counterparts, the Russians also manufactured an excuse for themselves to enter the war. Although, in typical Stalinist style, they took things a little bit further. Presumably aware that it was actually German forces behind the skirmishes on the Polish border - and almost certainly worried about how exposed the city of Leningrad was to an aggressive German military - Soviet forces began shelling one of their own towns.

Based mere miles from their Finnish border, the Red Army levelled parts of Mainila with artillery fire and immediately began a public propaganda campaign to blame it on Finland. With only the most basic of garrisons based anywhere near the border, and no suitable artillery even close to being in range for such an attack, the Finnish government strongly denied any responsibility. A neutral investigation was proposed, and immediately dismissed by the Russians in favour of tearing up their non-aggression treaty. Four days later Russian forces crossed the border, sparking The Winter War that dragged on for months longer than anticipated at the cost of nearly 500,000 lives.

Over a decade after the end of the Second World War, the then Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev wrote that the Mainila shellings were in fact organised by Russian forces. Boris Yeltsin even going so far as to denounce the entire Winter War as a calculated act of aggression on behalf of the Russian military.