Posted on 03/13/2010 5:13:22 AM PST by Homer_J_Simpson
William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
Editorials – 15-16
Finland
The New Hatch Bill
RFC to the Rescue
Archbishop Spellman
Strange Pilgrimage
That Convention Book
http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1940/mar40/f13mar40.htm
Finns accept Soviet terms
Wednesday, March 13, 1940 www.onwar.com
Finnish civilians read about the agreementThe Winter War... After the Finnish delegation have received formal permission from their government, the peace treaty with the Soviets is signed in the early hours of the morning. The ceasefire begins at 1200. This ends the 104-day war between Finland and the USSR — the Winter War. In Field Marshal Mannerheim’s last Order of the Day to the Finnish Army he states: “A severe peace [has been concluded] which cedes Russia nearly all the battlefields we have drenched with our blood... The deeds you have accomplished will shine for centures in the pages of our history.” Finland loses the Karelian Isthmus (including the city of Viipuri and the Vuoksi industrial belt), the Hango naval base and border areas northwest of Lake Ladoga, in the “Waist” and on the Arctic coast. The Finns have never had more than 200,000 men in the fight and have lost 25,000 dead and 45,000 wounded. Altogether the war has absorbed, on the Soviet side, 1,200,000 men, 1500 tanks and 3000 planes. Official sources put their losses at 48,000 dead and 158,000 wounded but this may well be a considerable understatement. This disparity in losses suggests to Allied and Axis observers that the effects of Stalin’s officer purges have still not been overcome. This impression of inefficiency contributes to Hitler’s decision to invade the USSR and makes the British and Americans a little reluctant to send supplies to the Soviets when the Germans do invade because they expect that the Germans will win quickly.
In London... Sir Michael O’Dwyer, the former governor of the Punjub, is assassinated by an Indian nationalist.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andrew.etherington/month/thismonth/13.htm
March 13th, 1940
UNITED KINGDOM: London: Sir Michael O’Dwyer, the former governor of the Punjab, is assassinated by an Indian Nationalist.
Corvette USS Impulse (ex-HMS Begonia) laid down. (Dave Shirlaw)
FINLAND: The Peace Treaty ending the Winter War is signed at Moscow at 1.00 am (Finnish time). The hostilities are to end at 11 am (Finnish time). (Mikko Härmeinen)
Despite the coming of peace, the war rages on in the early hours of the morning. Fighting is the most fierce at Viipuri, where the Red Army has reached the eastern suburbs, and at the western shore of the Bay of Viipuri. The ferocity of fighting is intensified by the belief common among the defenders that the post-war border shall be drawn where the front line runs at the end of the war. The Finns defend every inch in the belief that the shape and size of the post-war Finland depends on them. By the coming of dawn the men receive the word that war will end at 11 am, and even the Red Army shows signs of taking the last hours easy. But as the last half an hour begins, the Red Army artillery suddenly begins to fire a tremendous barrage at the Finnish positions. It goes on until the last minute of the war. Then it all ends. The 105 days of the Winter War are over. Finnish Army still stands, battered but intact. Nowhere in Karelia has the Red Army been able to reach the new border.
Maj. Lasse Varko’s detachment has fought in the bitter battles on the western shore of the Bay of Viipuri. In his message to his troops telling of the coming of peace, Maj. Varko instructs that “by 11 am as many Russians as possible has to be killed without incurring any own losses.” In his daily order to his troops after the end of the war, commander of the IInd Corps Lt. Gen. Harald Öhquist adds the uncompromising words: “One can never in any situation trust in our arch-enemy.”
The war leaves behind an immense legacy of bitterness. Molotov’s statement that the Soviet Union sees no reasons why its relations with Finland could not be good, rings hollow in Finnish ears. It is feared, and with a good reason, that Stalin only waits an opportunity to start a new war to take the rest of Finland. Foreign Minister Väinö Tanner, in a radioed speech to stunned nation, says: “In last reckoning our only fault was that we were too small a people.” The peace is already known in Finland as the interim peace (välirauha), everybody expects another war to follow, in the form of another Soviet invasion.
For the home front the severity of the Peace Treaty is a bolt out of blue. The strict censorship has kept it unaware of how desperate the situation actually was, and people was confidently waiting for the Allied help. Now a peace has been made, an unexpectedly harsh peace. Everywhere in the country flags are flying half-mast, often accompanied by black ribbons of mourning. The mood ranges from disbelief to anger. The Finnish popular opinion has always cherished the idea of Finland as the bulwark of the West against the Soviet communism. But Finland had to fight alone. Sweden and Norway denied the access to the Allied troops. Was the situation really so desperate as to warrant accepting so unbelievably harsh treaty? The coming of spring could have made the terrain easier to defend, and the Allied help would have arrived sooner or later... Thus began the historical debate that has continued to our days, intensified by the politicians who originally disagreed with the making of the peace. But the fact is, as shown IMO beyond dispute by historian Lasse Laaksonen in his recent book ‘Todellisuus ja harhat’ (’Reality and Illusions’; from which I have drawn much of my material for these postings), that the Finnish Army was only days from collapse. Sooner or later the Red Army would had managed to effect the decisive breakthrough, and there’s no telling how and if the Finnish front could have been reconstituted afterwards.
But there’s no doubt that the war has entered in the Finnish national consciousness. It’s the ‘One Hundred and Five Days of Glory’, when the nation unanimously fought against the Soviet invasion and saved the nation from the horrors of communism. The Legend of Winter War has born.
Regarding the last day of battle, March 13, Colonel of the Guards Viktor M. Iskrov writes:
“All of a sudden there was a phone call, Senior Lieutenant Vnukov, our battery commander, called me. He said: “Viktor, are you still fighting the war there? Are you planning to shoot?” “ Yes!” - was my answer. I was in a very high spirit: the Mannerheim Line had been broken, I could see Vyborg burning. I can very well remember that. On our left we could see both fire and smoke coming out of the city. “ So, the war is over,”b he told me. I answered: ”No way! Let’s go for Vaasa! We have just broken such a strong line, now we just have to go and capture Vaasa and other places!” Battalion commander Sokolov did not know anything about the end of hostilities either. Senior Lieutenant Vnukov told me over the phone: “ You want to fight the war there, Viktor, but I am here at the firing positions, and I will not permit a single mine to be fired. The war is over, they signed an armistice yesterday.” More...
The armistice went into effect at noon. In this way, the Finnish troops around Vyborg were surrounded, severely bombed, lost their main supply line, and abandoned half of the city completely. However, they occupied the island castle and the western bank of the river on the city’s edge right up to the armistice. (Hal Smith)
* a modern day map of Viipuri city center; Patterinmäki (Batarejnaja
Gora) is on the eastern edge of the map:
http://www.viipurikeskus.fi/kartta.html
* a rough map of Viipuri as it was in 1939; Patterinmäki is on the
right center of the map:
http://www.luovutettukarjala.fi/pitajat/viipuri/viipurikart%201939.htm
* a Finnish map of Viipuri and its eastern environs dating from
1939; city is on the left edge of the map, and Patterinmäki is the
unbuilt region between city center and southern suburbs:
http://www.maanmittauslaitos.fi/images/527.jpg
(248)
NEWFOUNDLAND: An agreement is reached for the Canadian Army to provide coastal guns to protect Bell Island off the northeastern coast of Newfoundland. (Jack McKillop)
CANADA: Submarine FS Side Ferruch departed Halifax escort for Convoy HX-27. (Dave Shirlaw)
PUERTO RICO: The USN’s Fleet Landing Exercise (FLEX) No. 6, which began on 11 January, concludes at Culebra. The Fleet Marine Force makes progress in developing techniques for rubber boat landings, getting heavy combat materiel ashore, and improving ship-to-shore supply. (Jack McKillop)
ATLANTIC OCEAN: U-44 is hit by a mine, in minefield No. 7, laid by the destroyers HMS EXPRESS, HMS ESK, HMS ICARUS and HMS IMPULSIVE. The boat is lost with all 47 hands. (Alex Gordon)
http://worldwar2daybyday.blogspot.com/
Day 195 March 13, 1940
The Winter War is over after 105 days. At 2 AM in Moscow, 1 AM in Finland, Finnish and Soviet delegates sign the Moscow Peace Treaty (documents are dated March 12, having been prepared by the Soviets the day before). However, the ceasefire is not scheduled until 11 AM Finnish time. In a vengeful act to punish the beaten and humiliated Finns, Red Army gunners shell the Finnish lines all morning, emptying their magazines as much as possible.
Finns lose 26,662 killed & 41,692 wounded. Civilian casualties are 892 dead & 1,856 wounded. 65 seamen die in the Finnish merchant fleet. http://www.winterwar.com/War%27sEnd/casualti_FinDailyD.htm
Soviet losses are 126,875 dead & 264,908 wounded, plus unknown numbers killed by NKVD behind Soviet lines and hospitalized with frostbite and other illnesses.
The Allies are robbed by the Finnish collapse of any pretext to move into Norway and Sweden. British troops march off the transport ships without having left port. The Allies do not abandon their ambition for action in Scandinavia. Churchill understands the importance of Norway to both sides and writes to British Foreign Minister Lord Halifax “Whether they [the Germans] have some positive plan of their own [for Norway]… I cannot tell. It would seem to me astonishing if they have not”.
[Footnote: The Finns kept remarkable records of their casualties, so these numbers are reliable. USSR on the other hand had no reliable records, so their casualty figure are at best SWAG (scientific wild-assed guess). Official Soviet estimates of casualties range from 200,000 killed and wounded (Molotov, just after the Winter War) to 1 million (in Nikita Khrushchev’s memoirs he states that 1.5 million Red soldiers went into Finland and only half a million came out). Neither of these figures is correct and the answer is somewhere in the middle.
The Gulf of Finland islands & the lands in Karelia (Isthmus and areas surrounding Lake Ladoga) and at Salla, given up by Finland in 1940, continue to be Soviet territory to this day. However, USSR formally renounced its lease on the Hanko Peninsula in the Paris peace treaty of 1947.]
The Finns should announce today that since the country they had the treaty with is no longer in existence, the Griffin on their flag will henceforth face to the right, the way it did before this treaty and the way it should be.
A note on the Soviet signatories to the Peace Treaty:
Vyacheslav Molotov; Foreign Minister, Premier of the USSR who had an “urban guerrilla weapon” named in his honor. He is widely known, of couse.
Andrei Zhdanov; head of the Leningrad Communist Party, and successor in that position to Kirov. Most people believe Stalin had Kirov murdered in order to start the Purges. Zhdanov had an uneasy relationship with Stalin and “the Center.” The Leningrad Party had a history of being somewhat “independent” which was anathema to Stalin, and it was only exacerbated during wartime when Leningrad was very much left on it’s own. However, Stalin thought highly of Zhdanov, even having Zhdanov’s son Yuri marry his own daughter Svetlana. For a time after the war when Molotov was in eclipse, Zhdanov was considered to be Stalin’s likely successor. But being labeled as Stalin’s successor was very bad for one’s health, and it in fact was for Zhdanov. It is likely that Zhdanov would have been “purged” but Zhdanov’s health gave out after a series of heart attacks and strokes, and he went into retirement.
Alexander Mikhailovich Vasilevsky: He is listed as a “brigade commander” and sounds like he is some sort of throwaway low-level flunky. Not so. While the rank of “brigade commander” equates to the rank of Colonel, in four short years “Brigade Commander” A. M. Vasilevsky will become Marshal of the Soviet Union Vasilevsky. He had been spotted as a rising star in the Red Army by it’s Chief of Staff, Boris Shaposhnikov, and he was known as Shaposhnikov’s protege. When Shaposhnikov’s health fails in May 1942, Vasilevsky will succeed him as Chief of the General Staff, and Vasilevksy directs the Red Army’s strategic planning throughout the rest of the war. He was to the USSR what George Catlett Marshall was to the U.S. Army. Vasilevksy will devise and oversee “Operation Uranus,” the encirclement and destruction of German 6th Army in Stalingrad, which is widely hailed as the Soviet Union’s greatest military victory.
Foreign Minister Tanner speaks over the radio at 12 noon to explain the terms of the peace treaty and the factors leading to its agreement. He praises the stamina and endurance of the army and the home front in carrying through a struggle in which Finland was left to stand or fall alone.
Photo: SA-KUVA
Peace treaty signed in Moscow
It appears this is the penultimate entry in this diary. Thanks for contributing the series.
My pleasure. I have a single entry for tomorrow with Mannerheim’s order of the day no.34 and then that wraps it up. The Finns put up a good fight but still paid heavily in blood and territory. Even to this day they no longer have Arctic ports like they did prior to the Winter War.
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