Eighty years ago, evidence that Germany plans to invade doesn't weaken Belgium's delusive neutralityrality
The
Finns scored a major victory over the Red Army in the Battle of Suomussalmi.
Soviet forces had driven to capture the city of Oulu which would have cut Finland
in half but the attack had run out of steam in the cold weather leaving an
exposed salient. Still outnumbered but with far greater mobility thanks to ski
troops and sled borne equipment, the Finns counter-attacked over familiar
terrain. Two Soviet divisions were annihilated. The battle became an icon of Finland’s
performance in the Winter War.
A
chance incident revealed the German Fall Gelb plan to invade France
through Belgium and the Netherlands, both still neutral. Over drinks at a
Luftwaffe mess the base commander offered to fly a paratrooper major to Germany
the following day and spare him a
tedious rail journey. Perhaps still affected by the convivial evening, the pilot
lost his way. The weather was so cold that the Rhine had frozen which didn’t
help navigation. The Me 108 force landed at Mechelen in Belgium. The
paratrooper had plans for Fall Gelb in his briefcase which he was only partially able to
burn. The documents were rapidly translated and shared with the Dutch, British and French. The attack seemed
imminent and the Belgian army chief of
staff made a radio broadcast to this effect on his own initiative. The French hoped that the Belgians would
allow the French army into the country but the King and his chief military
adviser clung to neutrality. The attack
did not come and the Germans waved away Belgian diplomatic protests. The
Belgian and Dutch governments failed to recognise that it was only a matter of
time before Germany put the plans into effect and clung to their doomed
neutrality. Neville Chamberlain who had long convinced himself that the Germans would never attack in the West suspected
the plans were merely a deception.
In
a fitting tail-piece to news that the BEF had suffered its first fatal casualties
in France, the road traffic statistics for December were published. 1,155
people were killed on the roads, the largest number since records began,
compared to 943 in December 1938. The black-out was proving far more lethal
than the Wehrmacht or the Luftwaffe.
The
same cold weather affected Britain and the Thames froze over for the first time
since 1888. A fluke combination of systems led to heavy rain which immediately
froze into thick ice. The weight of ice brought down power lines and branches
across the country. To complete the misery and disruption, heavy snow then fell
on top of the ice. It was known as the Great Ice Storm.
The
FBI arrested 17 members of the Christian Front and charged them with plotting
to overthrow the government. The operation was fronted with his habitual
showmanship by J. Edgar Hoover The Christian Front was a mainly American-Irish association
of supporters of Father Coughlin, the radio priest whose anti-Semitic, pro
Fascist and isolationist propaganda had a wide following. Front members had committed numerous attacks
on Jews but it is likely that the whole operation was essentially political. Attorney
General Frank Murphy had promised a
drive against un-American activities on the right of the political
spectrum. The House Unamerican Activities
Committee had rather restricted its investigations into Communists. The charges
were wildly overstated and the men were eventually acquitted.
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