Word: viipuri
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Peter the Great once called Viipuri the solid shutters of his window on Europe. When the shutters collapsed last week and Viipuri fell, the way to Helsinki, 140 miles away, lay open. Finland, by military judgment, was all but out of the war (see FOREIGN NEWS). The newspaper Suomen Sosialidemokraati said that "the whole nation hopes that the present abnormal situation can be eliminated . . . so that it can get back to peaceful ways...
...second nightfall, the breach was 25 miles wide and 15 to 25 miles deep. The gulf fortress of Viipuri now lay only 40 miles away...
...were thwarted. Second possibility: let the country have whatever government it has or seems to want, but weaken the country strategically and economically to the point where it could not possibly harm Russia. This the Russians did to Finland in March 1940, when the taking of Viipuri, Hango and the Saimaa Canal placed Finland in a dependent position. But the 1941 world situation interrupted Russian plans and Finland became just that place d'armes which Russia did not desire...
...Russians the terms are clear: resumption of the frontier established in 1940 after the first Russo-Finnish War. If the Finns could have Viipuri back and the Saimaa Canal which floats lumber to the Gulf of Finland, many believed they would accept these terms. Paasikivi was the only Finn with a chance of talking Stalin out of Viipuri...
...week's end, despite denials from Helsinki and Berlin, Uncle Joe Stalin appeared to be trying to maneuver Finland out of the war. He withdrew 15 divisions from the Karelian Isthmus. Having recaptured Viipuri, which the Russians took from them in 1940, the Finns, by the Russians' withdrawal, will now have virtually all their pre-1940 territory back again. Stalin evidently hoped that the Finns, anxious to retain the friendship of the U.S. and embarrassed by their alliance with Hitler, might now pile arms and pull out of the campaign...