Word: bothnia
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Chill winds and a new fear swept across Europe last week. Ice spread in the Gulf of Bothnia like ink across a blotter. Along the Westwall it was too cold to fight hard. Dirty ice formed on the Danube, and Rome shivered under sharp blasts from the Apennines...
...press in Germany trained its biggest propaganda guns on Foreign Minister Sandier, accusing him, among other things, of "pro-British" actions. But that was not what removed him. Long had Foreign Minister Sandier advocated fortifying, with Finnish cooperation, the strategic Aland Islands guarding the entrance to the Gulf of Bothnia. He especially urged it when Russia began her diplomatic pressure on Finland. Moreover, Mr. Sandier was the spokesman of those friends of Finland who believed that Scandinavian neutrality was indivisible...
Central Front. Russia's most potent threat to Finland came, not from the isthmus, but from four columns which penetrated the 485-mile frontier between Lake Laatokka and the Arctic Circle, striking westward at Finnish railheads and roadheads, trying to reach the Gulf of Bothnia. Last fortnight one of these columns was reported to have captured Kemijärvi and to be bearing down on Rovaniemi, which lies on Finland's Arctic Highway. Last week the Finns rushed troops north from the isthmus and in a surprise attack recaptured Salla, cutting this Russian column off from its base...
Sweden, which used to boss the Baltic and lick the Russians pretty regularly until Napoleon persuaded Denmark and Russia to gang up on her in 1808, joined Finland in mining the Gulf of Bothnia to keep the Red Navy out and Finland's supply lines open. Forty thousand more men were mobilized, bringing Sweden's armed forces to 150,000. The fortress of Boden, at the head of the Gulf of Bothnia, was reinforced with reserves. Here was the greatest Russian threat to Sweden, marked by the steady progress of a Russian column across Finland toward Tornio...
These thrusts were as dangerous as they were daring. Although Finland might be cut in half laterally and Petsamo crippled as a supply base, the Finns in the south could still get supplies from Sweden by way of the Gulf of Bothnia. Meanwhile the Russian columns were in peril of being cut off from their own bases. The Blitzkrieg was becoming a war of supply lines...