Posted on 12/09/2009 5:36:30 AM PST by Homer_J_Simpson
William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
* I messed up when I printed the page containing these stories by leaving a gap between the top third and the middle third. I marked the spots with x’s. I also thoughtfully totaled the columns showing merchant ships and tonnage sunk since September 3.
** The message to the President was made public by the National Council for the Prevention of War and was signed by the peace section of the American Friends Service Committee, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the Keep America Out of War Congress, World Peaceways, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and the War Resisters League.
Where’s Code Pink?
http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1939/dec39/f09dec39.htm
USSR accuses Germany of aiding Finns
Saturday, December 9, 1939 www.onwar.com
In the Soviet Union... The news agency TASS carries an erroneous report that Germany is sending supplies to Finland. In fact, the Germans are not sending supplies, but Italy is shipping material to Finland through Germany. Moscow-Berlin relations are strained by the report. Meanwhile, some 200 Polish Jews cross over the Bug river into Soviet occupied Poland after surviving being deported by the Nazis — and forced marched — from their homes in the cities of Hrubieszow and Chelm. About 1800 Jews began the trek.
In the Winter War... Near Suomussalmi, the Finns bring Soviet attacks to a halt. A brilliant night attack is also mounted on the 9th Army units near Kollaa.
In Geneva... The League of Nations begins a meeting to consider intervention in the conflict between Finland and the USSR.
On the Western Front... Corporal Thomas Priday of the King’s Shropshire Light Infantry is killed leading a patrol. He is the first British soldier to be killed in the Second World War. Meanwhile, King George VI completes a 5-day visit to the British and French troops.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andrew.etherington/1939/12/09.htm
December 9th, 1939
UNITED KINGDOM: Submarines HMS Union and ORP Sokol (ex-HMS Urchin) laid down. (Dave Shirlaw)
FRANCE: Corporal Thomas Priday, of the King’s Shropshire Light Infantry is killed, the first British fatality on the Western front.
POLAND: 200 Polish Jews exhausted and starving, tonight crossed the River Bug into Soviet-occupied Poland. The Jews, mainly middle-aged men from the cities of Hrubieszow and Chelm, have been “deported” - brutally force-marched - from their homes by the Germans. The march took a week, in which time 1,400 of the original 1,800 Jews were murdered, often by soldiers competing to see how many could be killed in a given time.
FINLAND: Helsinki: “General Winter”, normally Russia’s wartime ally, has come to the aid of the Finns. Bad weather has prevented Russian bombers from resuming the attacks on Helsinki which so badly damaged the Finnish capital in the first two days of war.
The respite has given the Finns a chance to organise their defences. The fires caused by incendiary devices have been put out, the rubble has been cleared, and the women and children who fled to the safety of the snow covered forest have been properly evacuated. Air-raid shelters have been prepared, fire-fighting teams set up, patients evacuated from hospitals.
110 people died in the first raids, but their deaths and the photographs of the devastation, far from sapping the Finn’s morale have served to strengthen their determination to fight. As is evident in the Finnish Air Force. 36 Fokker DXXI fighters backed up by obsolete Bristol Bulldogs, have torn into the Soviet aircraft over the battle front. The Finns tactics are simple, but effective, they charge into the middle of the Soviet formations causing them to scatter, then pick off the individual aircraft.
Help is on its way to the Finns. Britain is sending 30 Gloster Gladiators and a volunteer squadron of Swedish pilots is being formed.
U.S.S.R.: Moscow: Russia discovers that Italy is sending military supplies to Finland via Germany.
Stavka (the Soviet high command) takes over the direct command of all troops fighting against Finland. So far the war has been conducted locally by the Military District of Leningrad. (Mikko Härmeinen)
U.S.A.: Destroyer USS Gleaves launched. (Dave Shirlaw)
ATLANTIC OCEAN:
U-20 sank SS Magnus.
U-48 sank SS San Alberto in Convoy OB-48.
U-47 attacked a British destroyer in the North Atlantic, but without success. (Dave Shirlaw)
Stalin waged one of the worst-planned and -directed campaigns in modern times against Finland. He had just killed most of his experienced military commanders and staffs in purges, and sent the Red Army against the Finns completely underequipped and badly supplied. Krushchev, who I think was the chief political officer for this effort, admitted twenty years later that the Finland war had cost the USSR one million men. One million!
So what was the deal with Finland? I’ve seen them in some books listed as part of the axis powers with Germany, Italy and Japan while other classify them more like Poland-a victim of Soviet attack with no help from anyone so they took it from where they could get it.
I’d love to learn more if anyone has more info. Where they allies of hitler or just another soviet victim that historians have incorrectly put in hitlers camp?
Thanks!
So the Finns are putting up a brave fight against the USSR while nothing happens on the Western Front between the French and Germans. So how do the Allies react to Finland’s resistance? In about the most bizarre way possible. A passage from Ernest May’s “Strange Victory”:
In December, Daladier began to see hope of, at one and the same time, achieving new harmony in his cabinet and the legislature, lifting public spirits, restoring his own political dominance (thus undoing Reynaud), and perhaps escaping from the war with the equivalent of victory, minimal loss of life, and no fighting at all on French soil. These visions came to Daladier because of news from the North of Europe. On November 30, the Soviet Union suddenly attacked Finland, seeking to seize by force border and coastal areas that the Finnish government had refused to cede peacefully. Over the next several weeks, bulletin after bulletin told of Finland’s tiny army successfully holding off and beating back the much larger Soviet army. Footage of white-clad Finnish ski troops whizzing past slogging Soviet infantrymen highlighted newsreels in Parisian moviehouses.
Daladier’s mind became seized with the following propositions:
1) Since the League of Nations, in what amounted to its death rattle, had expelled the Soviet Union and declared it an aggressor, France and Britain had a warrant – indeed, a duty – to commit troops and planes to aid Finland.
2) Though this would involve opening a second war – with the Soviet Union as well as Germany – not much would be risked, for the Soviet Union was already effectively a German ally, and its performance against Finland demonstrated that it was militarily of little account.
3) Being at war with the Soviet Union as well as Germany would yield large net benefits for two reasons: the wider war would have enthusiastic support from those in France who feared Bolshevism as much as or more than Nazism and, as a result, were ambivalent about a war against Germany alone; and the Allies could make their economic war against Germany truly effective because they could attack the oilfields in the Caucasus, from which Germany was being fueled, and also, by going to Finland via Norway and Sweden, could cut off Germany from its major source of iron ore.
4) Since the German economy was described by Allied intelligence services as under snapping strain, these actions by the Allies would force recognition in Berlin that the war was lost; German military men, officials, industrialists, and financiers, already disenchanted, would band together to remove Hitler and make peace, with no more shots fired or bombs dropped on the Western front.
To describe these propositions as forming a chain of reasoning would be to overstate both the solidity of each and their mutual coherence. But a reader, perhaps dizzied by the notion that anyone could have though that the way to win a war against Germany was to start a war against Russia, should not forget that Daladier had shown himself for many years to be an astute political tactician and that he was no tyro in matters military. Each proposition had some plausibility. Each, separately, was believed to be true by one or another of Daladier’s French or British colleagues. Churchill agreed with Daladier on almost all points.
“Strange Victory” pp. 328-9.
For the record, you can count me as one of the readers dizzied by the notion that the way to defeat Germany was by taking on the USSR as well. One must wonder what the Allied leadership was smoking to even contemplate this “strategy.”
For a small nation, Finland was successful in pursuing independent diplomatic and military policies during WW2. As you can see from post #10 below, Finland was considered by the Allies to be naturally inclined to support them in the wider war against what the west perceived to be the “German-Soviet Bloc.”
However, the Western Allies were not able to provide any material assistance to Finland before she was finally overwhelmed by superior Soviet numbers and firepower.
A year later, after the Fall of France, the Germans approached the Finns about the possibility of “payback” with the USSR by cooperating in Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. The Finns agreed, and allowed the Germans to use Finland as a staging area for Arctic operations against the Soviets, and also declared war on the USSR and fought against the Soviets in the same battlefields as the Winter War.
However, the Finns were never under the thumb of the Germans the way the Romanians were. The Finns considered themselves “co-belligerents” only, and NOT allies of the Germans. The Finns even called WW2 “the Continuation War” as an extension of the Winter War of 1939-1940. In pressing war aims in WW2, the Finns had the opportunity to take Leningrad from the north, but refused. They did not want to go far past their 1939 border; their goal in the Continuation War was only to restore the border, not to dismember the USSR. They did not succumb to German pressure and maintained their own independent streak. As John Keegan wrote of the Finnish decision to not attack Leningrad in 1941:
“However unlikely it might seem at that moment that Finland would ever have to deal again with a resurgent Russia, caution demanded that she behave no more predatorily towards Russia than Russia had done towards her after the end of the war the year before. On such unspoken conventions do the most important international understandings rest.”
John Keegan, “Barbarossa” p. 127.
Finland’s policy was “Finland First” and she never wavered from that. This policy of prudence paid off. For example, although she was a German co-belligerent, the United States never declared war on Finland. And in 1944, when the Soviets once again broke the back of the Finnish army and Finland sued for peace, the USSR did not impose a puppet government and make Finland a subservient Soviet state. The Finns never again dared challenge the USSR, but in exchange was left alone by them. During the Cold War, the Finnish border patrol aggressively stopped anyone attempting to flee the USSR, and promptly returned them to the Soviet border guards.
“So what was the deal with Finland? I’ve seen them in some books listed as part of the axis powers with Germany, Italy and Japan while other classify them more like Poland-a victim of Soviet attack with no help from anyone so they took it from where they could get it.”
Finland was not allied with anybody in 1939 and then the Soviets attacked after the Soviet-German pact. Finland got minor help from volunteers and some equipment from other countries.
After a few months (fighting alone), Finland had to accept a ceasefire and cede eastern part of Finland to Soviets. Next few years, Finland armed itself and had some co-operation with Nazi-Germany. This was because Germany was the only country willing/available to help at that time.
When Germany attacked to Soviets, Finland attacked too. Finland has maintained (correctly in my opinion) that their war was separate from Nazi-Germany’s war efforts (ie Finland did not participate in Leningrad siege).
Finland got all the lost land back. Eventually, in 1944 Soviets attacked again and drove Finns back to the original position. Again, Finns survived and stopped the Soviet invasion, but had to make peace and (again) cede the eastern part of country to the Soviets.
Next 50 years Finland was a democratic and neutral country, but very afraid of Soviets and had to had friendly relationship with the Soviets. Finland had some minor secret relationship with US military and CIA too, though officially Finland had (in theory) some sort of military agreement with Soviets.
Thanks for the info!
I noticed that too about the 1930s version of “
Code Pink”. I wonder how many of these so called “peace” organizations were Soviet front groups. I guess some Methodists were as wacky then as today as the bottom of the article mentioned the document was signed by a Methodist leader.
Back then she was proud to be American, and would soon be known as "Rosie the Riveter".
Ladoga Karelia: the 13th Division takes up defensive positions between Lake Ladoga and Varpajärvi.
Photo: SA-KUVAL>
Finnish American volunteers set sail for Finland
Sounds like a cushy job, living on the west coast, occasional runs out to Hawaii. What could be nicer?
And President Roosevelt must like Richardson a lot, else why would FDR appoint him to such a high post? ;-)
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