Book contents
1 - Finland
from Part I - The National Armies
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 December 2017
Summary
On the evening of 26 June 1941, Finns gathered around their radio receivers to listen to a speech by their President Risto Ryti. His message was dramatic but predictable: Finland, a sparsely populated but territorially large Scandinavian democracy on the northeastern shores of the Baltic Sea, had once again stumbled into a war with its mighty neighbor to the East. Since the launching of Operation Barbarossa four days earlier, the Soviet air force had bombed Finnish coastal defences. During the following days airfields and large towns also became the targets of air attacks, prompting the Finnish parliament, on the afternoon of 25 June, to give its unanimous backing to a government statement declaring a state of war.
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- Joining Hitler's CrusadeEuropean Nations and the Invasion of the Soviet Union, 1941, pp. 17 - 45Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2017
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