NORTHERN THEATRE: Happy Birthday to Joe

For his birthday last week Joseph Stalin wanted Finland. By this week it had become pretty clear even to Joe Stalin that he would be some time getting what he wanted. But his Armies made desperate efforts to get him at least a little something. While strengthened land forces hurled themselves at the Finns on three fronts, Soviet airplanes opened a fresh campaign of terror, raining bombs on Finland’s southern cities—Helsinki, Viipuri, Turku, Hanko, Tampere and Porvoo. Finns said 350 planes took part in a single day’s bombing.

The Finnish defenses were surprisingly effective. Anti-aircraft batteries (equipped with the fine Swedish Bofors guns) potted Russian bombers high in the clear cold air, and Finnish fighting planes brought other bombers down. The Finns claimed they got 50 planes in the week’s raids. Furthermore, the Finns had billeted Russian prisoners near schools and hospitals and announced to Joe Stalin’s boys that if they bombed these objectives they would get their own men first.

The Finns did a little raiding of their own. Finnish fliers bombed Russian troop concentrations and supply lines for the Karelian Isthmus. They also raided the captured border village of Terijoki, where Red Finns had set up a “People’s Government” and equipped a “People’s Army” with uniforms from the reign of Sweden’s Charles XII (1697-1718) filched from a museum.

Net result of the week’s air fighting was to show Joe Stalin that the Finns still did not scare.

Karelian Stall. On the Karelian Isthmus, where the Russians have been pounding at the Mannerheim defenses for three weeks, they gained a little ground, at tremendous cost. Correspondent James Aldridge of the North American Newspaper Alliance described the taking of a hill near the Taipale River, where the Russians have been trying to flank the Mannerheim Line.

“. . . The Soviet troops started shelling this hill. . . . They continued shelling it all day, making it untenable for Finnish snipers and blowing almost the whole top off it.

“After this barrage had cleared away … four thirty-ton Russian tanks appeared from a timber clump and started advancing across the snowy waste to the foot of the hill. Crouched behind each tank were about twenty men, using it as a shield.

“The Finnish advance lines in timber clumps opened up with machine-gun fire and . . . picked off a few men behind each tank. . . .

“Slowly the snow-clogged tanks advanced to the foot of the hill, with only three-fourths of the infantrymen left. A Finnish mortar or anti-tank shell burst twenty yards from the first tank and the Russian soldiers dropped to the ground. The tank seemed disabled, for it stopped. The three other tanks went on a few more yards to some granite boulders at the foot of the hill, then turned and plunged at full speed back to the woods for more men….

“While the tanks were returning to the woods a Finnish advance machine-gun nest from high boulders on the east opened fire on the Russian troops at the foot of the hill. We could not see the result, but it must have been devastating, for the nest was almost behind the men. . . .

“The tanks came out and heavy firing started again. . . . The tanks had not gone half way to the hill when a heavy blast . . . resulted in a big explosion right under the nose of the third tank. The tank seemed to leap up on its rear end. When the snow cloud cleared you could see a jagged mess of metal, no longer a tank, and the men behind it flat on the snow. The two other tanks came ahead slowly. . . . They finally got to the hill.”

Below the 40-mile-wide bottleneck that is the isthmus at its narrowest part, the Russians still had forces estimated at from 500,000 to 1,000,000 men. They had plenty of tanks and, most important of all, plenty of heavy artillery that pounded away steadily against the Finns’ granite defense lines. Sooner or later, if the Russians could afford the cost in men and machines, these lines might give way. And then again they might not. Aid was coming to the Finns (see below).

Central Reverse. The Russian thrusts across Finland’s 485-mile waist came to real grief last week. These drives were made by columns traveling light, presumably planning to reach their objectives in time to get fresh supplies. Instead of opposing them near the frontier, the Finn:, by design or otherwise, let them move in. One column, which entered by way of Kuolajärvi and Salla, got as far as Pelkosenniemi, in the centre of Finland, before the Finns met it. Then, while one detachment of Finns recaptured Salla, cutting off the rear, another attacked the advance column at Pelkosenniemi and sent it fleeing eastward. Although the Finns were too weak in man power to annihilate this Russian force, they harried it with guerrilla tactics and leisurely cut it to bits.

Near Suomussalmi, which the Finns recaptured last fortnight, 7,000 Russians were reported similarly trapped. Last week the Finns revealed the strategy that halted this drive. Finns fell back before the Russian advance, lured the Russians into a narrow passage between two lakes, then split their own forces to attack the Russians in this passage from front and rear (see map).

Russia’s central drives had failed. The Russians were left the choice of reorganizing them, with fresh troops and supplies, or abandoning that campaign for the winter. Three weeks of war had shown that Russia’s supply lines to the north can hardly support two campaigns; that if the central campaign is reorganized, the northern drive must be called off.

Arctic Rout. The far northern drive had already been halted last week—but not by the Russians. In the dark Arctic region south of Petsamo the Finns had a real birthday present for Joe Stalin, and they delivered it wrapped in a blizzard. While the Finns were digging in near Ivalo, on their Lapland “Mannerheim Line,” preparing to meet the Russian mechanized forces that were rolling southward, a thick, swirling snowstorm enveloped the Russian Army. Tanks and lorries had to be dug out of snowdrifts. Gasoline supply trucks were stalled on the road from the north. The Russians had no shelter because the Finns had burned everything before retreating. While the Russians huddled around their machines, trying to keep warm in a −25° temperature, Finns swooped down from the hillsides on skis, began potting them from the woods with machine guns. It took little of this to convince the Russians that they had gone too far from base. Their trucks and tanks, which last fortnight had rolled in a steady stream southward along the Norwegian border, last week rolled less steadily northward. With the Finns harassing their flanks and rear, this retreat soon turned into a flight.

The Finns told tales of Russians freezing to death, stuck in the snow. They did not chase the fleeing Russians far because they wanted to save their men, and the weather was fighting for them. By week’s end the Russians were in full flight toward Kola, and the Finns announced triumphantly that there was not a live Russian in the Arctic region south of Salmijärvi.

At Sea. Russia failed to do anything important with its superior navy. Swedish dispatches claimed the Finns had scored a direct hit on the Ortizabrskaya-Revolutia (October Revolution) when it tried to shell Koivisto. On Lake Laatokka the Finnish submarine Saukko continued to harass troop transports.

Another Spain? After three weeks of war Russia’s planned Blitzkrieg had definitely failed to blitz. Defeated on two fronts and held on the third, the Red Army had lost immeasurably in men, morale, prestige.

Even in Moscow the Russian casualties were estimated at 30,000 men. The Finns were believed to have lost less than 4,000. The Finns said so many Russians have frozen to death that they fear an epidemic when the corpses thaw in spring.

While Russia floundered, Finland, as a result of the League of Nations’ sanctioning help, grew stronger. A Finnish delegation in Washington got the U. S. Navy to release 40 fast Brewster pursuit planes ordered for the Navy, placed orders for ammunition and machine guns. In Paris, after a meeting of the Supreme Allied War Council, Premier Daladier announced that France had already given Finland assistance “that is not mediocre”—presumably weapons. Sweden sent her neighbor 37 airplanes and released from military service 10,000 men, who promptly “volunteered” to help the Finns. With Great Britain and Italy also unofficial allies, Finland seemed destined, like Spain, to become an international battleground. President Kyösti Kallio had his picture taken in the trenches with his Army, to keep up the good publicity.

All in all, Joe Stalin did not have a happy birthday.