This Day in History

Finland resists Soviets attack

On 30 November 1939, the Red Army crosses the Soviet-Finnish border with 465,000 men and 1,000 aircraft. Helsinki was bombed, and 61 Finns were killed in an air raid that steeled the Finns for resistance, not capitulation.
The overwhelming forces arrayed against Finland convinced most Western nations, as well as the Soviets themselves, that the invasion of Finland would be a cakewalk. The Soviet soldiers even wore summer uniforms, despite the onset of the Scandinavian winter; it was simply assumed that no outdoor activity, such as fighting, would be taking place. But the Helsinki raid had produced many casualties-and many photographs, including those of mothers holding dead babies, and preteen girls crippled by the bombing. Those photos were hung up everywhere to spur on Finn resistance.
Although that resistance consisted of only small numbers of trained soldiers – on skis and bicycles! – fighting it out in the forests, and partisans throwing Molotov cocktails into the turrets of Soviet tanks, the refusal to submit made headlines around the world.
President Roosevelt quickly extended USD 10 million in credit to Finland, while also noting that the Finns were the only people to pay back their World War I war debt to the United States in full. But by the time the Soviets had a chance to regroup, and send in massive reinforcements, the Finnish resistance was spent.
By March 1940, negotiations with the Soviets began, and Finland soon lost the Karelian Isthmus, the land bridge that gave access to Leningrad, which the Soviets wanted to control.

Harry Truman warns of atomic weapons

Also on this day in 1950, President Harry S. Truman hints he could authorize the use of atomic weapons in order to achieve peace in Korea. At the time of Truman’s announcement in a press conference, communist China had joined North Korean forces in their attacks on United Nations troops, including US soldiers, who were trying to prevent communist expansion into South Korea.
Truman blamed the Soviet Union for using communist Chinese insurgents as part of a devious plan to spread communism into Asia and pledged to “increase our defenses to a point where we can talk – as we should always talk – with authority.” The press then asked what Truman planned to do if the Chinese Nationalists, who were already struggling against the spread of communism in their own country, failed to get involved in the Korean conflict.
Truman responded that the US would take “whatever steps were necessary” to contain communist expansion in Korea. A reporter asked “Will that include the atomic bomb?” to which Truman replied, “That includes every weapon that we have.”
In 1945, Truman had authorized the use of two atomic bombs to end the war with Japan. The bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and, although the Japanese did surrender, the horrifying results were still fresh in everyone’s minds.
But Truman went on to assure the press that day that he never wanted to see the bomb used again.
In the end, the Korean conflict ended in stalemate, and did not involve the use of atomic weapons by either side.