Posted on 03/09/2010 5:08:26 AM PST by Homer_J_Simpson
The cult story sounds interesting. heh
and where do the allies get this billion dollars to buy our planes?
Packard!!?? Not Toyota?? lol
http://worldwar2daybyday.blogspot.com/2010/03/day-191-march-9-1940.html
Day 191 March 9, 1940
Finland. Soviets take Tali village on the outskirts, almost surrounding Viipuri. Red Army is in control of the Western shore of Viipuri Bay & most of the islands. However, Finnish aircraft strafe Soviet troops on the ice and shoot down 3 Soviet fighters. In the evening, Finnish Government in Helsinki considers Soviet peace demands including Lake Ladoga and Salla district in Lapland. Commander-in-Chief Mannerheim suggests there is no alternative to surrender.
British release the Italian coal ships detained on 7 March, on the eve of German Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop’s visit to Rome. Italy can continue to import German coal only via an overland route. This British concession attempts to prevent further Italian/German alliance.
Battle of the Atlantic. U-14 sinks 3 British steamers 5 miles off the Belgian coast near Zeebrugge. At 5.42 AM, SS Borthwick is sunk with 1 torpedo. All 21 crew are picked up by Dutch pilot Loodsboot No.9 and landed at Flushing, Holland the next day. At 11.30 PM, U-14 hits SS Abbotsford with 1 torpedo. Another British steamer SS Akeld turns around to help but is torpedoed and sinks (all 12 hands lost). At 11.55 PM, U-14 finishes off SS Abbotsford with a second torpedo (all 19 hands lost).
http://www.uboat.net/allies/merchants/ships/291.html
U-38 spots 6 trawlers (with lights on, indicating neutrality) 10 miles North of Aran Island, Ireland. From 200m, U-38 fires a warning shot from its deck gun at 9.13 PM. Irish trawler Leukos is hit and sinks (all 11 hands lost). http://www.irishseamensrelativesassociation.org/leukos_crew.htm
At 11.17 PM, U-28 sinks neutral Greek steamer P. Margaronis with 1 torpedo (all 30 hands lost), 125 miles West of Brest, France. http://www.uboat.net/allies/merchants/ships/292.html
http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1940/mar40/f09mar40.htm
Finns admit Soviet advances
Saturday, March 9, 1940 www.onwar.com
The Winter War... The Finns acknowledge that Soviet forces have established a bridgehead on the northwest shore of Viipuri Bay. However, the communiqué claims that the defenses along the rest of the Karelian Isthmus remain intact. Finland is now in danger of being overwhelmed by the Soviet offensive. Meanwhile, Britain and France promise Finland troops and planes to fight the Soviets provided that Helsinki makes a formal request.
In Berlin... Admiral Raeder tells Hitler the British and French might occupy Norway and Sweden under the pretext of aiding the Finns and encourages an invasion of Norway at the earliest time.
In London... An Anglo-Italian compromise solution to the “Coal Ships Affair” of March 7th is achieved. The Italian colliers detained by the British are released and Italy agrees to find an alternative (overland) supply route from the German coalfields.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andrew.etherington/month/thismonth/09.htm
March 9th, 1940
UNITED KINGDOM: RAF Bomber Command: 4 Group. Leaflets and Reconnaissance - Vienna, Prague. 102 Sqn. Three aircraft from Villeneuve. No opposition.
Britain and France promise troops and planes to Finland to fight the Russians.
An Anglo-Italian compromise solution to the “Coal Ships Affair” of 7 March is achieved in London. The Italian colliers detained by the British are released and Italy agrees to find an alternative (overland) supply route from the German coalfields. (Jack McKillop)
Minesweeping trawlers HMS Hazel and Juniper are commissioned. (Dave Shirlaw)
NORTH SEA:
At 2330, SS Abbotsford was torpedoed by U-14 north of Zeebrugge. 15 minutes later, the U-boat torpedoed and sank SS Akeld NE of Zeebrugge, which was following the other ship. At 2355, Abbotsford was torpedoed again by U-14 7 sank immediately. The master and 17 crewmembers from the Abbotsford were lost. The master and eleven crewmembers from Akeld were lost
At 0542, the unescorted SS Borthwick was torpedoed and sunk by U-14 north of Zeebrugge. The master and 20 crewmembers were picked up by the Flushing Pilot Boat #9 and landed at Flushing on 10 March 1940
At 2113, steam trawler Leukos was attacked without warning by U-38 about 12 miles NW of Tory Island. At 2000, the U-boat had spotted six trawlers all with their light set near Tory Island and thought that they were forming a patrol line. He decided to give one of them a warning and fired one shot from its deckgun at the Leukos from a distance of 200 meters. The shot hit the trawler in the engine room and she disappeared in a cloud of steam and smoke. The U-boat waited until the trawler sank after one hour and then continued the patrol. Leukos was reported missing on 12 March, when she failed to arrive in Dublin. On 21 March, a lifeboat bearing the logo of the ship was washed ashore on Scarinish Tiree off the West Coast of Scotland. (Dave Shirlaw)
NETHERLANDS: The government breaks diplomatic relations with Bulgaria. (Jack McKillop)
GERMANY: Admiral Erich Raeder, Commander of the German Navy, tells Chancellor Adolf Hitler that the British and French might occupy Norway and Sweden under the pretext of aiding the Finns and he encourages an invasion of Norway at the earliest time. (Jack McKillop)
U-109 is laid down.
U-124 is launched. (Dave Shirlaw)
FINLAND: Helsinki: The Finns, in danger of being overwhelmed by a Russian offensive all along the front, have today sued for peace despite the harshness of the Russian terms.
Events took on a certain inevitability after the Russian ultimatum for the acceptance of the final peace terms ran out on 1 March. Two days later Marshal Timoshenko launched another crushing attack and the town of Viipuri came under direct attack. The Finns could not hold out for much longer.
On 6 March a delegation headed by the Prime Minister, Rysto Ryti, travelled to Moscow. Mr. Paasikivi, the minister in charge of the negotiations, hoped to force concessions from the Russians.
Coldly received by the foreign minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, and denigrated in scornful language by the Russian press, the delegation continued to negotiate until he shattering news came that Viipuri had fallen. The Finns asked for an armistice. Molotov said “niet” and Ryti was forced to capitulate.
There are still many details to be settled and Ryti is in constant touch with his government in Helsinki. Meanwhile the fighting continues on all fronts.
One legacy of Finland’s war against the USSR is a simple but deadly projectile. It consists of a bottle - empty vodka bottles are preferred - filled with petrol, or paraffin, and tar. Strips of rag are used as stopper for the bottle. The rag is lit, causing the contents of the bottle to ignite on impact with the engine compartment of a tank, the usual target; the flaming tar seeps into the engine. In this way countless Soviet tanks were wrecked, and the Finns sardonically dubbed their new weapon the “Molotov cocktail”.
The Finnish cabinet gathers to discuss the Soviet terms, which are: ceding all the Karelian Isthmus, including the historic city of Viipuri (then the second largest city of Finland), northern Karelia, and territory around Salla in northern Finland, plus the western half of the Kalastajansaarento (Rybachi) peninsula in the far north. (In many non-Finnish histories Petsamo, the Finnish outlet to the Arctic Ocean, is also included to the territories Finland lost in 1940, but that didn’t happen until 1944.) Also the Soviets demand leasing the peninsula of Hanko in the northern shore of the Gulf of Finland for 40 years. Only in one respect has the Soviets lessened their demands: there’s no more talk of a Soviet-Finnish-Estonian defence pact.
The harshness of the terms delays the decision, and some think war to the bitter end with Allied help preferable to the Soviet terms. They point out that in Karelia the Red Army hasn’t been able to conquer all the territory the Soviets now demand (nor were they able before the war ended; nowhere had the Red Army reached the new border in Karelia when the fighting ended), not to mention the fact that 400 000 Finns live in the land to be ceded. The new border is also far harder to defend, and many are afraid that after a pause, the Soviet Union will start another war to finish the job of conquering Finland. It’s better to fight now when the Allies are ready to help. But the majority is ready to face the harsh reality. It’s better to end the war when the Finnish Army is still intact and able to fight back, the collapse could only be days away. Mannerheim, after consulting with his generals, states that peace has to be made as soon as possible. After hearing Mannerheim’s statement, the President of the Republic Kyösti Kallio reluctantly agrees.
On this day the Red Army has consolidated its foothold on the western shore of the Bay of Viipuri, and the fighting there reaches new intensity, as the Red Army tries to break through the Finnish defences to threaten the back of the Army of the Isthmus (Kannaksen Armeija) fighting in the Karelian Isthmus. The Soviet operation crossing the frozen Bay has been a strategic surprise to the Finns, who originally thought such operation impossible. Now the Finnish defences consists of battalions hastily transferred to the area. There are coastal-defence battalions composed of older reservists and infantry battalions transferred from the northern Finland after the Swedish volunteers manned the front there. However, the going is not easy for the Red Army. The Finns fight desperately back, and the lines of supply across the ice are endangered by the coming spring. Already in the battles for the islands on the Bay of Viipuri the Red Army has lost several tanks when the ice cracks under them.
On these last desperate days the local Finnish commanders in the Karelian Isthmus and Bay of Viipuri often ask for permission to retreat to better positions, but are refused. The GHQ, aware that negotiations are going on at Moscow, is playing a desperate gamble. The Finns has to fight firmly as long as the war lasts, so as to put the Finnish negotiators at least in a slightly better position. But the high command is aware that the troops are reaching the end of their endurance. Which comes first, the collapse of the Finnish Army, spring that makes the terrain harder for the Red Army to advance, or peace?
350 Finnish-American volunteers form the Amerikansuomalaisten Legioona (American Finnish Legion). They have trained with Danish volunteers at Oulu, in north-west Finland. Today its No. 1 Company is sent to the front by train. (Mikko Härmeinen)
GIBRALTAR: U.S. freighter SS Exmoor is detained at Gibraltar by British authorities. (Jack McKillop)
MEDITERRANEAN SEA: The ex-mercantile sailing ship MURAD is wrecked off the coast of Lebanon. She was armed with one 75mm gun and a 37mm cannon. [prior information courtesy of Henri Le Masson’s The French Navy, Volume 2, Macdonald and Co., 1969](Greg Kelley)
U.S.A.: Destroyers USS Kearny and Plunkett are launched. (Dave Shirlaw)
Approximately 70 Finnish aircraft strafe enemy troops and columns in Viipurinlahti bay. In the resulting dogfight, the Finns shoot down three enemy fighters. One Finnish plane is lost and three damaged.
Photo: SA-KUVA
Main defensive line again in Finnish hands by midnight
As I LISTENED to the remarks of Henry Wallace and Jim Farley just now, and in my mind's eye saw the hundreds of groups of farmers and their friends meeting throughout the country, my memory went back to scenes of other years.I remembered the day in September, 1932, when, at Topeka, Kansas, under the very hot sun that beat down on the steps of the State Capitol, I talked with an audience of farmers about the farm problem. I gave them my pledge that, if I were called to serve in the White House, I would take the lead in action to reverse the process of agricultural decay which had been eating at our national foundations for many years.
I have sought consistently and constantly to keep that pledge. Four days after I took office in 1933—while the banks of the country were still closed and we were sternly wrestling with the question of how to get them open again—I called the conference of farmers and leaders of farm organizations to which Secretary Wallace has referred. Seven years ago tonight, March 8, 1933, the call went out to farm leaders by wire and by telephone to convene here in Washington on March tenth.
Well do I remember that historic conference at the White House that followed. In that grave emergency, past disagreements were forgotten and all the farm groups quickly united on a new farm plan.
The adoption of that plan in its essential outlines by the Congress marked a far-reaching decision in our national life. We stopped asking agriculture to pay the bill for industry's high tariff. We decided that as a nation we would no longer promote commerce and industry at the expense of agriculture. We decided that as a nation we would abandon the policy of rural neglect.
That old policy of neglect had brought ten years of depression on our farms and had contributed greatly to depression in the cities as well. It had hastened the bank panic which in February and early March of 1933 had paralyzed industry and farming itself all over the United States.
In the seven years that have elapsed since that time, the national farm program has properly undergone a continual evolution. That first piece of legislation—the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933—was a long step forward, but it was not perfect. As the years went by, weather conditions changed, market conditions changed—yes, and even court conditions changed. So the provisions of the farm program have been correspondingly changed to keep the program more up-to-date.
We have learned from experience, and have gradually adapted the program more and more closely to the needs of the individual farmer, to the needs of the nation, and to the needs of the land itself. We realized that we had reached our last frontier of new lands—and that we had no choice but to conserve and rebuild our existing soil.
All through these seven years, one fundamental feature has run like a thread through the successive adjustment and conservation and ever-normal granary programs. That is the essential policy of localized control, with the program run by committees of farmers elected by farmers—and that goes for farmers regardless of what party they happen to be enrolled in.
Experience has amply borne out the wisdom of the safeguards with which those county associations and committees were surrounded. In three thousand counties—practically all the counties of the nation that are not occupied wholly by cities—they win respect and they deserve respect. None but those farmer committeemen themselves will ever know how they have sweated over details of the program, how they have sacrificed their own personal interests and their leisure as they spent thousands of hours and drove thousands of miles to make the program succeed.
Back of these committeemen, helping them in their work, giving support to the program, have been some of the great general farm organizations. Not only in the farm communities, but right here in Washington, these organizations have helped to shape and perfect the successive farm laws.
When we launched the national farm program seven years ago, we hoped that recovery in the United States would be accompanied by a great revival of our trade with other countries.
I wish I could tell you tonight that the whole world had been restored to prosperity and friendly commerce. I wish I could tell you that the markets which your fathers and grandfathers once enjoyed were again open to receive more of your wheat, your pork, your lard, your cotton, your tobacco, your fruit.
I can tell you this—that we have done many things that have helped the situation. Through our reciprocal trade program, we have tried to spread our good-neighbor philosophy through many nations of the world. I always prefer understatement to overstatement, and so I can properly say that. That program has brought results—results not only in better markets for our industrial goods but also in better markets for our farm goods—results which are mathematically proved in terms of pounds and bushels and dollars and cents. If Congress consents, we shall continue that useful work.
But in spite of all we have done to help preserve and restore peace in the world, the bitter truth is that the world is not at peace. As I speak to you tonight, guns are thundering on the battlefields of Europe and of Asia. Ships that ply the seas are exposed to the hazards of bomb and torpedo.
In the midst of a world at war, we find that the foreign commerce we had managed to achieve is rudely disturbed. Some people may say, What of that? Does not our domestic trade comprise 90 per cent of all our business? Yes, that is true for the nation as a whole. But, for some industries export trade accounts for considerably more than 10 per cent of all sales. In agriculture, for example, that is true of cotton, tobacco, apples, lard, wheat and many other products. All agriculture is certain to be seriously affected if our export markets disappear.
So it is more than ever important for farmers to have a Government in Washington that is looking out for their interests not just by uttering glittering generalities but by specific policies and concrete action. It is more than ever important to maintain a national farm program that can be adapted to meet whatever emergencies arise—whether they are emergencies of drought or of lost markets overseas. It is more than ever important to have a Government in Washington that can act to protect the interests of our farmers as well as our business men when foreign trade conditions are upset. In Europe economic failure has led in some lands to dictatorship. In America we are using the tools of democracy to make our economic system efficient, to preserve our freedom, and to keep away even from any talk of dictatorship. The national farm program is American democracy's response to agricultural distress. Any unprejudiced person who knows anything about the subject not only admits but proclaims the fact that our national farm program was democratically conceived and is being democratically conducted with the active help of our farmers themselves.
Furthermore, they proclaim what they know—that their Federal Government counts on farm aid and farm advice to improve that program through the process of actual experience as the need arises. That, I call a truly democratic process of Government.
These are troubled times we of this generation are living through. Some of us, I know, are tempted to give way to doubt and tear, even to despair.
But when we are beleaguered by thoughts like these, let us remember how the nation has come through its dark hours of the past, and take courage. Think of Adams and Jefferson and Madison, as they guided the nation through the confusion of the wars of the Napoleonic period, with ships rotting at the docks and millions of dollars of farm products stored on the wharves of the Atlantic seaboard. Think of Lincoln as year after war-torn year he sheltered in his great heart the truest aspirations of a country rent in twain.
We believe our beloved United States will come through all its trials and tribulations of the present. Ever since 1929, the people of the United States have demonstrated pretty well the stuff of which they are made.
One of the reasons we know we shall win through is the national farm program, the inception of which you are commemorating tonight. The farm program is a splendid example of what 6,000,000 American families can do, when they have the will and the leadership to do it.
The farmers have had a long, hard struggle to get laws and programs which give them an opportunity to obtain economic and social justice, to make it possible for them to conserve the good earth which, next to our people and our tradition of freedom, is our greatest heritage.
I am happy in the thought that American farmers have gone part way along that road to economic and social justice, even though they have not reached the goal. I am happy in the thought that the American farmers understand full well that other great groups, such as industrial and retail groups in the cities, great and small, such as the small business men of the nation, have not yet attained the goal of social and economic justice even though in these seven years they have made undisputed progress toward it.
Many years ago I was told by men of experience in State and national affairs that American farmers could never agree on a program. I did not share that pessimistic belief. My friends and I went out to disprove it and the farmers of America showed clearly that we were right. To them go the honor and the glory.
In the spirit of progressive action that has animated and now animates these American farm families, all of us tonight can face with confidence whatever difficulties the future may hold.
Citation: John T. Woolley and Gerhard Peters, The American Presidency Project [online]. Santa Barbara, CA. Available from World Wide Web: The American Presidency Project
This is the first account I’ve read of Finnish troops panicking and deserting. We’re now in the 5th week of the Soviet offensive, and you have to think that after five weeks of continuous heavy defensive combat, combat fatigue and exhaustion is taking a heavy toll on the Finnish forces. Even the tough Finns have a mental breaking point, the Soviet steamroller has finally reached it.
The fighting spirit of the Finnish soldier is commendable indeed. They have been taking a pounding from their large neighbor for over 100 days and to only now start to have a breakdown as the Soviets, at huge expense, is finally achieving some progress, is a real statement to just how good they were. Imagine if they had been more aggressive when they signed on to fight the Soviets with the Germans. I’d bet they could have taken Leningrad as well as the critical ports at Murmansk and Archangel.
The Finns could indeed have taken Leningrad, or completed the encirclement by crossing the Svir River east of Lake Ladoga and hooking up with the Germans at Tikhvin. However, the Finns feared that they might someday have to reckon anew with their large neighbor, and might not have a powerful friend at their side. The same situation they found themselves in March, 1940. So they hedged their bets. As John Keegan said: “It is upon such unspoken conventions that the most important international arrangements rest.” Or something like that. I quoted it earlier. And because of that, Finland did not beecome the Finnish People’s Republic in 1944.
A man ahead of his time:
“In 1951 he advocated reparations, to be paid to the descendants of slaves.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father_Divine
how far back do we have to go? The Roman Empire?
We go back far enough, they owe me reparations....just need to figure out who “they” are.
My family never owned a slave, nor exploited fruits of slavery. My maternal grandfather arrived here from Macedonia in 1906. However, my paternal great great grandfather arrived in the U.S. from Prussia in 1848, and settled in Wisconsin. In 1861 he volunteered to free the slaves. For the next four years, he risked his life on the bloodiest battlefields of the Civil War in the 5th Wisconsin Infantry. He left behind a wife and five children in Watertown, where they had to live off the charity of the community to make ends meet.
I would like for the descendants of the slaves to pay my family restitution for freeing them.
They seems to become “we” doesn’t it?
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