Page 188 - The Chief Culprit

Germany’s Strategic Resources and Stalin’s Plans y 149

fortifications and halted its advance. Finland without the fortifications was defenseless. At
any moment, Stalin could have given another order and renewed the advance of the Red
Army. From Finnish territory it could have bombed Swedish ore mines and railroads unhin-
dered. No one could have impeded this. e seizure of the Åland Islands alone would have
been enough to close off the mouth of the Gulf of Bothnia, which would have meant an end
to World War II with a Soviet victory.
And that was not all. In the part of Europe that was occupied by Hitler there are no
forests. e forests are in Finland and Sweden. Any possible cessation of the shipment of lum-
ber across the Baltic Sea carried with it a multitude of consequences, and all were negative.
e wood was needed for building and restoring railroad ties and for mining coal, which was
needed for forging steel. No wood meant no transport along the railroads. During peacetime
in Germany there was already a yearly timber shortage of about 6 million tons. Instead of
wood pulp they had to use potato foliage. e Fuehrer himself attests to that. 10
But that was just during peacetime, when no one hindered the transport of timber
across the Baltic Sea. As soon as Stalin’s submarines struck German timber carriers, Germany
would have wound up without wood at all. Potato stalks would not have sufficed to make
up the shortage, because they cannot replace good wood in all its uses. It is possible to make
poor quality paper out of them, but impossible to make railroad ties, impossible to timber
coal mines.
On top of everything else, Germany had no nickel. It was impossible to fight without
nickel—but the nickel supplies were in Finland. At the beginning of 1940, during the course
of the war against Finland, the Red Army had seized control of the nickel mines in Petsamo,
and then in the spring of 1940, according to the peace treaty, returned them. But now nickel
was obtained according to joint Soviet-Finnish shareholding companies with the participa-
tion of Soviet engineers and workers. e Soviet government insisted that the director of the
entire operation be a Soviet man. Nickel from Petsamo went to both Germany and the Soviet
Union. Germany was receiving 70,000 tons from this area, or 70 percent of Germany’s an-
nual demand of this strategic mineral. However, the nickel supply could be stopped at any
11
moment. e Soviet 104th Rifle Division, under Major General Morozov (of the 42nd Rifle
Corps of the 14th Army) stood right outside the nickel mines.
German strategists did not fear a new Soviet invasion of Finland in vain. On November
25, 1940, the People’s Commissar of Defense of the USSR, Marshal of the Soviet Union S.
K. Timoshenko, and Chief of General Staff of the Red Army General K. A. Meretskov
signed a directive to the staff of the Leningrad military district. Only one copy of the docu-
ment was produced, and it was labeled top secret and especially important. Let’s remember
the date—November 25, 1940—we will return to it later on.
e document begins by saying:

In the conditions of war only against Finland, the USSR establishes, for conve-
nience of control and material supply, two fronts: the Northern front for action on
the shoreline of the Barents Sea and in the direction of Rovaniemi, Kemi and Oulu;
the Northwestern front for actions directed toward Kuopio, Mikkeli and Helsinki.
e leadership of the Northwestern front falls on the shoulders of the command and
staff of the Leningrad military district. It is ordered to start the development of plans
for operations opening up the Northwestern front. . . . e main objectives of the