Russo-Finnish War Begins

On November 30, 1939 the Soviet Union invaded Finland. The ensuing conflict is also known as the Winter War. Finland had once been an autonomous part of the Russian empire and a period of conflict began at the end of the 19th century when Russia began a policy of Russification to reduce Finland’s autonomy. This produced a great deal of discord and when the Russian empire collapsed in 1917 the Finns seized the opportunity and declared their independence. The Russians let them go having their own civil war to worry about at the time. However, the Russians never really accepted the idea of Finnish independence and there were periodic border incidents and episodes of political conflict including some armed conflict.

By 1938 Stalin was ready to rectify the situation and the Soviets made a number of demands for territorial swaps and concessions the net effect of which would be that the Finns would have to give up the territory containing their extensive border fortifications which later became known as the Mannerheim Line. This the Finns refused to do. The Nazi-Soviet Pact put Finland within the Soviet sphere of influence and after his successful invasion/occupation of Eastern Poland, Stalin felt free to launch what he thought would be an easy campaign against Finland.

The Soviets employed 21 divisions plus supporting tank and aircraft units. Soviet manpower committed initially was about 425,000 to the Finns initial total of 130,000. The Finns quickly mobilized many more eventually reaching a strength of more than 300,000. Still, the Finns could not match the Russians in heavy equipment such as tanks, airplanes, and artillery. The Finns also suffered from a shortage of ammunition most notably for their artillery. On paper, the Russians have what they need to win and are attacking all along their border with Finland though mostly concentrated in the south on the Karelian Isthmus where supply and transportation resources can support a larger invasion force. We’ll see what happens.

I should note that this commences a very surreal period in World War II diplomacy. The Russians are generally remembered as allies of the West against Germany but we are entering a period where western sympathy for Finland combined with anticommunist sentiment to present a real danger of fighting between the British and French on the one hand and the Soviets on the other. More on this also as time goes by.

Assassination Attempt on Hitler – Munich 1939

On November 8th 1939, a bomb planted by Georg Elser, a German Communist who worked as a carpenter, exploded at the Burgerbraukeller in Munich killing eight people and wounding 63. Eva Braun’s father was among the dead. The bomb was intended for Hitler who was scheduled to make a speech there on the occasion of the anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch. Elser had managed to hide in the Burgerbraukeller after closing every night for over a month. During that time he hollowed out a column near where Hitler would be speaking and filled it with explosives.

Hitler did make his speech but cut it short. Somewhere between eight to thirteen minutes after Hitler left the building (depending on which source you use) the bomb exploded. Elser was arrested, tortured and confessed to the attempt but claimed to have acted alone. He was imprisoned in a concentration camp and murdered there on April 9, 1945 to ensure he would not be rescued by the Allies. He lived as long as he did because Himmler wanted to use him in a show trial to establish British complicity in the assassination attempt after Germany won the war.

Historians generally agree that Elser planted the bomb but it remains uncertain whether he acted alone. Depending on how you count there were as many as seventeen attempts on Hitler’s life between September of 1939 and May of 1945. The July 20, 1944 attempt is only the most famous one.

United States Amends Neutrality Act – “Cash and Carry”

On November 4th, 1939 amendments to the Neutrality Act became effective which allowed the United States to sell weapons and military supplies to belligerents in Europe which would (1) pay cash and (2) carry the material away in their own ships. As a practical matter British control of the seas meant that only Britain and France could benefit from this policy. Earlier on October 18th in the same spirit President Roosevelt had banned foreign submarines from U.S. territorial waters, a ban which though neutrally stated could concern only the Germans.

The invasion of Poland affected opinion in the United States in a way which allowed Roosevelt to overcome isolationist opinion on this occasion and to this degree. Thus did Roosevelt’s slow and patient movement toward the end of American neutrality continue.

Sinking of the British Battleship Royal Oak

On October 14th 1939, the German submarine U-47 penetrated the harbor defenses of the British main base for their home fleet at Scapa Flow in the Orkney islands. After searching in vain for some time for a suitable target, U-47 came upon the British battleship Royal Oak. U-47, commanded by Captain Gunther Prien, fired four torpedoes. This produced one hit, two misses and a malfunction. On board the Royal Oak, the crew was not clear what had happened and the first thoughts were that there had been an internal explosion. Many crew members simply went on with what they were doing at the time. U-47 fired another torpedo from her stern tubes which also missed. In the meantime the forward tubes were reloaded. This time a spread of three torpedoes produced three hits and Royal Oak capsized and sank. 833 of her crew of over 1,200 were killed.

The daring and spectacular nature of the attack was a substantial propaganda coup for the Germans. The substantial loss of life and the fact that many of the bodies could not be recovered from the ship have made the site of the sinking a memorial for the British people and the Royal Navy perhaps comparable to the USS Arizona memorial for Americans.

However, the military impact of the sinking beyond the immediate loss of life was very small. Royal Oak was one of the Revenge class of battleships built in 1913-1914. Despite refits and upgrades during the interwar years, in 1939 Royal Oak could manage a top speed of only 20 knots which was not enough to keep up with the rest of the fleet. This had been demonstrated earlier in the month when Royal Oak had participated in a search for the German battle cruiser Gneisenau which had entered the North Sea as a diversion and cover for the successful breakout of the commerce raiding German pocket battleships Deutschland and Graf Spee.

Royal Oak had returned to Scapa Flow with its shortcomings exposed and some minor but not inconsequential damage from its efforts to operate at top speed in rough seas. The reason U-47 had to search for targets was that the main units of the British fleet had been dispersed to other ports for fear of a German air attack. A decision had been made that Royal Oak could be risked so that its antiaircraft armament could be added to the Scapa Flow defenses. Royal Oak might have served usefully later in the war supporting amphibious landings with its heavy guns. However, for the immediate aftermath of its sinking, an objective and admittedly cold-hearted assessment is that the sinking had little impact on the military balance. Winston Churchill then First Lord of the Admiralty said as much when he announced the sinking on October 17th.

On the other hand, the loss of life which would have been tragic in any event had that tragedy compounded by the Royal Navy’s employment of boy seamen between the ages of 15 and 17. Over 100 of these boys under 18 were among those killed on board the Royal Oak. Although the navy publicly defended the practice, boys under 18 never again served aboard active warships except in exceptional circumstances. There are many informative internet sites on the sinking so I won’t link to one of them. I’ll just say that typing “royal oak sunk” into a good search engine will bring up a number of good choices for digging deeper into these events.

Warsaw Surrenders

On September 27, 1939 the defenders of Warsaw surrendered to the Germans. The resistance of the defenders had been long and determined but by this time all reasonable means of defense were exhausted. Any realistic hope of relief from their western allies or their own Polish forces had disappeared well before this date. For the Germans there remained only mopping up operations which were completed by October 6th. Polish soldiers persisted in their efforts to escape across neutral borders to the very end. Expect a mini-essay on the results of the campaign and another on the Polish army of 1939 soon.

Massive German Bombing Raid on Warsaw

On September 24th, 1939 the German Luftwaffe (air force) conducted a massive bombing raid on Warsaw. A common figure given for this raid is an attack by 1,150 bombers. I was skeptical because the first source that gave that figure also gave the Germans only 850 bombers for the entire campaign. The book “Men of the Luftwaffe” by Samuel W. Mitcham Jr. (Presidio, 1988) confirms the 1,150 figure and gives the Germans barely enough bombers to mass that many in an attack if you count Stuka dive bombers and planes assigned to the western front with France. It helpfully adds that the “bombers” included 30 Ju-52 transports carrying 2 pound incendiaries that were literally shoveled out the door by two men in each plane equipped with potato shovels. In part because of the smoke from the resulting fires, german ground troops were killed by stray bombs provoking an argument between army and air force that had to be settled by Hitler himself. Hitler said keep on bombing as before.

In “The Luftwaffe War Diaries” ( Doubleday, 1968) Cajus Bekker states that the Germans made 1,176 bombing sorties (one flight by one aircraft). He also gives the date for the attack as September 25th and gives it credit for the subsequent surrender of Warsaw. I am inclined to believe Bekker on the sorties (the Stuka’s e.g. could easily have attacked multiple times in the same day) but not on the date or the raid’s impact. So this was probably not the first “thousand bomber raid” nor a raid that decisively broke an enemy’s resistance. Warsaw had been bombed and shelled for days as well as subjected to ground attacks. Food, ammunition and even drinkable water were in increasingly short supply. There is no doubt that this and other bombing attacks contributed to the end of Polish resistance but Bekker is hogging all the credit for the Luftwaffe and possibly distorting the chronology to bolster his case.

Chinese Counteroffensive at Changsha

On September 21, 1939 the Chinese counterattacked at Changsha. The timing of the attack appears to have been based on the fact that on the previous day the Japanese had begun breaking through the fourth and last Chinese line of prepared defensive positions. With the Japanese fully extended and the Chinese having extracted the last ounce of advantage from the prepared defenses, the counterattack cut the Japanese supply lines and forced a retreat. I will go on to say that a second Japanese attack, begun from the north on the 18th, was similarly dealt with starting on the 25th. By October 6th the Japanese had been forced back to their original positions.

The Japanese will try again and as a result the above operations became known to history as the first battle of Changsha. Meanwhile more and more observers including many Japanese believe this battle demonstrates that the Japanese have reached the limit of their ability to win territory in China.

Soviets Invade Poland

On September 17, 1939 Soviet troops crossed the border into Poland to claim their portion of Poland under the secret protocol of the Nazi – Soviet nonaggression pact.. Polish troops were ordered not to resist except in direct self defense or to avoid capture. Soviet troops initially did not go out of their way to attack the Poles where it was possible to advance without doing so. Later, however they did become more aggressive and sought to prevent Polish troops from escaping across Polish borders with neutral countries attacking and capturing Polish troops in order to do so.

By now, Warsaw was encircled by the Germans. Another Polish army in the South was on the brink of surrender. Remaining Polish units were either holding out in small pockets, most notably on the Baltic coast, trying to escape into Rumania, Hungary or Lithuania or trying to join up with the defenders of Warsaw or Modlin for a last stand.

Back in my high school days I hadn’t paid attention to the date of the Soviet invasion and had casually assumed it was on more or less the same date as the German one. However, upon further review it seems that the situation was attended by some confusion on the part of the Soviets. They intended to keep as low a profile as possible by coming in after the Germans had invaded. They would try and obscure the true nature of their actions with a cloud of propaganda about protecting Soviet nationalities such as Ukrainians and Byelorussians and providing civil order.

In fact, the Germans at least were concerned about a power vacuum in eastern Poland and on September 3rd their Foreign Minister Ribbentrop had cabled his Soviet counterpart Molotov urging the Russians to commence their attack from the east. The Soviets however were surprised by the speed of the German advance and Molotov was forced to send a series of cables providing assurances and promises of action. During this time the Soviet army was frantically completing logistical preparations. They did not use the army units located nearest the Polish border which contained large percentages of troops with an ethnic affinity to some of the peoples of eastern Poland. Moving troops from the Soviet interior increased the scale and complexity of the logistical task. Hence, September 17th.

Polish Counteroffensive Defeated

As noted earlier, Poland launched a counterattack on September 9th against the northern flank of the German Army Group South i.e. a portion of the German eighth army advancing from the west. The initial attack met with some success as it hit a relatively thin screen of German infantry on flank protection duty. The Germans committed more and more troops first to stem the Polish advance and then to cut off and surround the attacking Polish forces. By September 12th the Polish attack had been halted and by the 15th Polish forces were attempting to avoid encirclement and break out toward Warsaw and Modlin. Only a few made it and the remaining Polish forces were destroyed or captured in the following few days.

The Polish attack did temporarily take the pressure off of Warsaw. 29 German divisions were committed in whole or in part to the defense and subsequent encirclement operations. German air power was committed on a large scale as well. Now Warsaw is on the brink of encirclement as the Germans regroup to focus on Warsaw.

Battle of Changsha

After months of sporadic and indecisive fighting, hampered by the need to battle the Russians in the north and continued and undiminished Chinese resistance to the south, the Japanese resume their offensive in China. On September 13th, 1939 the Japanese launched a major attack aimed at the capture of the Chinese city of Changsha. Changsha was the capital of Hunan Province and was a major agricultural, transportation and population center.

Fortunately for the Chinese the city was protected by an extensive area of hill country of the type that the Chinese had already shown themselves to be adept at using for defense. The Chinese concentrated fifty divisions and built multiple lines of defense. The Chinese are running out of space to withdraw and are determined to make a stand. In theory this is an opportunity to strike a crushing blow against an enemy which though superior in numbers lacks airpower and artillery and which has always ultimately been forced to abandon the battlefield in the past. We’ll see what happens.