NORTHERN THEATRE: Such Nastiness

For six centuries Russia tried and spectacularly failed to conquer Finland before Alexander I won it from Sweden in 1808-09. Alexander had two big advantages: 1) he made a deal with the Swedish gentry in Finland promising them self-government; 2) he waited until February to begin his invasion, when the Finnish lakes were frozen fast and he could bring up supplies by sledge. Even then it took him 19 months to quiet the Finns.

Russia's Joseph Stalin began his invasion last fortnight with these advantages reversed. Instead of a disgruntled ruling class, he faced a nation which, almost to the man, hates the Russians as bloody oppressors.* And instead of clear weather and frozen lakes, Joe Stalin's forces found themselves fighting in a blinding blizzard, which grounded aviation, smashed tanks against half-concealed boulders and granite tank barriers, and gave to the Finns, who fight guerrilla-style in small units, with short, light machine guns and short, razor-edged knives, an almost even break. By the end of the second week of the war the Russians, who had thought they were starting a Blitzkrieg, were still hammering desperately at the Mannerheim defenses in Karelia, while in the north (the only section they had succeeded in penetrating deeply) their supply lines were dangerously lengthened.

Surprised by the cleverness of Finland's preparations, Russia's press exploded in wrath. Wrote Nikolai Virta in Pravda (from Terijoki, where Russia has set up its joke People's Government): "When our tired men wanted to drink, they found all the village wells filled with earth. . . . Hardly had the first Red fighter set foot on Finnish soil when an explosion rent the air—a mine! Mines are everywhere." Even the Russian soldiers were indignant. Writer Virta quoted one as saying: "What cads! . . . They are masters of foul play. How well they make such nastiness!'1

Isthmian Drive. Even more nastiness was in store for the Russians—especially in the Karelian Isthmus, historic gateway into Finland and the one Alexander I stormed with 17,000 men in 1808. Not only were roads, bridges and buildings mined—even a new bicycle left leaning against a fence was a detonator—but the Finns had utilized the geographical peculiarities of their country shrewdly.

Lowlands had been flooded, augmenting the chain of lakes across the isthmus and leaving only narrow strips of land between the lakes as passageway for invaders. This land, wooded and boulder-studded, was a natural anti-tank defense, to which the Finns had added long lines of jagged, diamond-shaped boulders, three deep, as their main lines of defense against tanks. Above the narrow roads other huge boulders had been poised, so that the mere cutting of a cord sent them hurtling into the road. Concrete pillboxes, sunk into the earth and covered with sod, guarded all main avenues of passage. In the thick fir forests hid the Finns themselves, trained since childhood to use their knives as cleverly as an Alabama Negro uses his razor, and since joining the Army to aim their machine guns as accurately as a sharpshooter aims his rifle. Finally, there was the snowstorm.