Word: finlander
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...centuries Russia tried and spectacularly failed to conquer Finland before Alexander I won it from Sweden in 1808-09. Alexander had two big advantages: 1) he made a deal with the Swedish gentry in Finland promising them self-government; 2) he waited until February to begin his invasion, when the Finnish lakes were frozen fast and he could bring up supplies by sledge. Even then it took him 19 months to quiet the Finns...
Surprised by the cleverness of Finland's preparations, Russia's press exploded in wrath. Wrote Nikolai Virta in Pravda (from Terijoki, where Russia has set up its joke People's Government): "When our tired men wanted to drink, they found all the village wells filled with earth. . . . Hardly had the first Red fighter set foot on Finnish soil when an explosion rent the air-a mine! Mines are everywhere." Even the Russian soldiers were indignant. Writer Virta quoted one as saying: "What cads! . . . They are masters of foul play. How well they make such nastiness...
Isthmian Drive. Even more nastiness was in store for the Russians-especially in the Karelian Isthmus, historic gateway into Finland and the one Alexander I stormed with 17,000 men in 1808. Not only were roads, bridges and buildings mined-even a new bicycle left leaning against a fence was a detonator-but the Finns had utilized the geographical peculiarities of their country shrewdly...
...column reached Nurmes, cutting the railroad that runs diagonally across Finland from Tornio on the Swedish frontier to south Karelia and the isthmus. Farther north, another column took Suomussalmi and turned southward toward lisalmi, a rail junction in the centre of Finland. Still farther north, a third column bore down on the roadhead of Kuusamo. Most daring of all, the fourth division crossed the low mountains to Kuolajärvi and thence sped westward past Kemijärvi toward Rovaniemi, which lies on Finland's highway to the Arctic. From Rovaniemi this column might strike southward to Kemi...
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...