Word: helsinki
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1930-1939
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...week since the war began, he stepped off the train to be greeted by a sober-visaged Secretary of State Cordell Hull, flanked by Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles, Assistant Secretary of War Louis Johnson. The President's quietest week was over, ended by bombs falling on Helsinki by Russia's invasion of Finland...
Cold and clear was the U. S. reaction to Russia's move. At the White House the President conferred with Statesmen Hull and Welles, spent 45 minutes with Finnish Minister Hjalmar Procope. All day reports of Russian bombings of Helsinki came to the State Department from the U.S. Minister to Finland. At 6 p.m. Mr. Hull got word that in a raid of 15 planes, bombs had fallen near the U. S. legation, that buildings within three blocks were in flames...
First came the droves of bombing planes over all main Finnish cities. Apparently most came from Russia's new bases in Estonia (see map). They showed ability in reaching their objectives on schedule in formation through low, overcast clouds, but their bombing aim was wretched. At Helsinki, the capital, they aimed at the big central railroad station, freight yards, post office, and at the west harbor (navy yard, transatlantic piers), but mostly hit apartment houses blocks away, shattered the windows of their own legation. Aiming at the city's water supply, they hit the new Olympic Stadium. They...
...that of Russian soldiers practicing trench-mortar firing and hand-grenade throwing. President of Finland's National Defense Council Baron Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim toured the border that day and heard of no firing. A Finnish Government spokesman concluded that the entire incident was "completely untrue." At Helsinki the Government had no intention of ordering troops to retire from a frontier fairly jammed with Red Army contingents. To withdraw from back of their fortified line would be something like the French, on the Western Front, evacuating the Maginot Line...
...frozen solid enough to support Army movements, Dictator Joseph Stalin meant to have a Finnish war-unless he was playing a gigantic game of bluff to the very end. Whether bluffing or not, the Finns took no chances. They closed most of the channels leading into the port of Helsinki preparatory to mining, and the little Army on the Karelian Isthmus braced itself against an increasingly probable attack...