Word: viipuri
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...only real fact to realize," said Finland's Minister to Stockholm Eljas Erkko, "is that war in Finland is still going on." All Europe's statesmen and all her journalists might be negotiating and writing about peace (see p.19) but in the heap of bricks that was Viipuri. along the Vuoksi where at least the surface of the ice was beginning to be spongy, above Lake Laatokka where the Finns say they came on a freezing, black-clad Russian holding up his arms and crying: "Don't shoot me! I'm a Russian capitalist": far north...
Finns still held Viipuri. Day after day the Russian hammer pounded, but the Finns did not give much though Russian sources reported that Soviet troops had captured the northern and eastern parts of the ancient port, and seemed slowly to be forging a steel ring around the deserted city...
Cities are an obstacle of great strength to advancing infantry. In a place like Viipuri, a focus, where concentration can be met with concentration, the overwhelming superiority in Russian numbers makes little immediate difference. Hammer meets steel...
...extended front, along which heavy Russian forces can strike, one dawn at one point, the next 50 miles to the west, now here, now there, unexpectedly. Along such a front the Finns must scatter thinly, and be continually vigilant. The new sector: the northwest shore of Viipuri Bay and along the Gulf of Finland, on a front of 60 miles -halfway to Helsinki. Across the ice of the bay a great Russian sickle swept again & again. It hit some stumps and some stones, but it cut down a lot of grass...
...still the hordes came on, and at week's end even the Finns had to admit the Russians had several footholds on the coastal front. Obvious aim was to penetrate inland and cut the vital lines of communication from Helsinki to Viipuri, then sweep around behind the Finns' last-ditch defenses in the Mannerheim Line. Many a Finn was constrained to admit that a moderately honorable peace would be preferable to gradual strangulation by Joseph Stalin's Molasseskrieg...