Stupid Wars : A Citizen's Guide to Botched Putsches, Failed Coups, Inane Invasions, and Ridiculous Revolutions

by Ed Strosser

  By June 1935 both sides were willing to at least listen to the latest — the eighteenth — attempt to broker a peace. Para­guay realized it was at the breaking point and agreed to end the war. Diplomats from the five nearby countries — Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and Peru — along with the United States, pushed the sides to stop the senseless slaughter. When the meeting was about to break up without a deal, the U.S. representative, Alexander Wilbourne Weddell, ambassador to Argentina, demanded the sides work out their differences. They listened. A truce broke out while a commission from the mediating countries marked out a border across the Chaco to divide the non-spoils of war.

  Bolivia and Paraguay agreed to stop the fighting at noon on June 14. All morning the two armies peered at each other from their trenches. With just half an hour before the dead­line, for no apparent reason they started firing at each other. The fusillade grew, and soon both armies feverishly un­leashed their weapons, blowing through stores of ammuni­tion. The casualties mounted. At noon, whistles blew and the firing stopped. Half crazed from the slaughter and delusional from knowing it was actually over and they had survived, soldiers on both sides cheered and danced with enemies that only minutes earlier they’d tried to kill. It was a bloody, senseless end to a bloody, senseless war.

  The war’s only purpose was to prove to any doubters that a meaningless war, fought over a meaningless and barren land, is not enough to spring a country from the losers’ bracket.

  WHAT HAPPENED AFTER

  Jubilation broke out throughout South America when the war ended. So relieved was the world that the organizer of the peace conference, Carlos Saavedra Lamas, the Argentine foreign minister, received the Nobel Peace Prize for his ef­forts. In fact, ending the war propelled him to the presidency of the assembly of the League of Nations. The peace confer­ence met for three years before they settled on the treaty’s final terms on how to divide the Chaco.

  Bolivia and Paraguay endured enormous casualties from the fight. Bolivia suffered nearly 50,000 deaths; about 2 per­cent of its total population, while Paraguay had about 40,000 dead, nearly 3.5 percent of its population. This would translate percentage-wise to about 10 million dead for the United States today.

  As for the leaders, Estigarribia was forced into exile after a coup in 1936 but returned from Argentina three years later. On August 15, 1939, he became Paraguay’s president. Un­happy with the temporary nature of the country’s presidents, he promoted himself to dictator, but in 1940 he renounced his position and declared he would hold elections. Since no good deed goes unpunished, a few months later his plane crashed, killing him along with his wife and the pilot.

  In 1938 the six-member commission finally drew the border between the two warring countries. Paraguay received the bulk of the Chaco; Bolivia got a chunk of the western section near its oil fields and a slice providing it with a small port on the Paraguay River with access to the Atlantic Ocean. It was a deal both sides could have worked out years before the war.

  The Chaco is still wildly depopulated, amazingly worth­less, and filled with flies. Both countries are still landlocked nanopowers.

  NINE.

  THE WINTER WAR BETWEEN RUSSIA AND FINLAND: 1939

  Hubris is the theme of many ancient Greek plays and also some foolish modern plays for power.

  It’s hard to think of Josef Stalin as a tragic figure from a Greek drama, unless plays have been unearthed featuring a paranoid, murderous thug with a shag mustache. Although the Soviet dictator caused tragedy wherever he and his army went, he himself was not tragic. Nevertheless, in failing to understand or even entertain the idea that the Finns might put up some resistance to being invaded, Stalin showed a Siberian-sized amount of hubris.

  And that is exactly what Stalin did when he decided to invade Finland in late 1939, in a fit of logic, to extend the Soviet borders at the expense of the Finns and prepare his country’s defenses for the inevitable German invasion. Ex­pecting a short winter romp in the snow, the Russians made no preparations for a prolonged campaign featuring actual fighting by a breathing enemy. The Soviets poured wave after wave of undertrained and ill-equipped troops into the dark, cold Finnish winter. They suffered one of the most lopsided defeats in modern warfare. All the while, Stalin’s real enemy, Adolf Hitler, watched in glee as little Finland pounded the fabled Red Army.

  THE PLAYERS

  Josef Stalin — evil Rex Soviet leader who signed a nonaggression pact with the equally evil Adolf Hitler, all the while fearing that — could it be true? — Hitler would stab him in the back and actually invade.

  Skinny — Adopted the motivational program for his generals that those who finished in first place got to keep their jobs, those in second place got an all-expense paid trip to a Siberian gulag, and the third place winners got taken out behind Ukraine and shot.

  Props — Equal Opportunity Killer.

  Pros — Bested the Nazis in the mother-of-all-evildoer death matches.

  Cons — Just about everything else.

  Field Marshal Carl Gustav Mannerheim — known as “Тhe Кnight of Еurope,” the aristocratic general was the supreme commander of the Finnish armed forces. For years he beat the drum for a stronger military to protect against the inevitable rambling of the Soviet Bear, but his Finnish leaders ignored him. In frustration, he resigned in 1939 but before it took effect the Soviets attacked, and he was named to lead the defense.

  Skinny — His first language was Swedish, but then he spent thirty-five years in the Russian army, admiring the tsars. When he returned to Finland in 1918, he needed a translator to talk to his Finnish troops.

  Props — Was so famous in Finland that the country’s main line of defense against the Soviets was named for him.

  Pros — Fought the Communists when they were called Bolsheviks and fought them when they were called Soviets. He even fought them as Hitler’s ally. But he still couldn’t bring back the tsar.

  Cons — Never really felt comfortable with the whole democracy thing.

  THE GENERAL SITUATION

  In 1939 the world had dissolved into a very dangerous place. Hitler had swallowed Austria and Czechoslovakia without much opposition. Poland was next. He was concerned, how­ever, with how the Soviets would react to this little foray. Hitler’s people and Stalin’s people had a chat, then a talk, and finally a meeting. The result was the Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact. It was reported to the world in late August without a hint of irony that a treaty between two of the most aggressive countries in history contained the word nonaggression.

  Publicly, the treaty was all about trade and other good stuff. Privately, Hitler got Stalin to agree not to object to his planned takeover of Poland. Even better, they divvied up Poland and the small countries between them like they were M&Ms. Hitler got the blues and greens while Stalin got to turn the others into reds. In particular, the treaty gave Fin­land to Stalin.

  With the treaty signed, Hitler green-lighted the invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, and when the British and French raced to Poland’s rescue with a firestorm of angry words about Adolf, World War II was on. Adolf swore up and down that he would never, ever consider invading Russia, but Stalin, to his credit, still had doubts about Hit­ler’s character. Stalin decided to beef up the defenses of Len­ingrad and the navy bases surrounding the eastern end of the Baltic Sea, just in case Mr. Hitler turned out not to be who he said he was. A quick check of the map, however, revealed to Stalin that the Finns actually owned most of the land ap­proaching Leningrad.

  Finland has a complicated history. It was part of the pow­erful Swedish Kingdom from the end of the fourteenth cen­tury until 1809 when it was traded to the Russian Empire. By the late nineteenth century, the tsars treated the Finns harshly and dominated all Finnish institutions. But the Finns waited and when the tsar fell in 1917, the Finns declared their independence. On December 31, 1917, Lenin formally recognized the newly independent state of Finland.

  But the wave of Communist agitation that er
upted throughout Europe had also infiltrated Finland. A civil war erupted between the pro-Soviet Reds and the Finnish bour­geoisie led by Mannerheim. To defeat the pro-Soviet Com­munist forces, the Finns called in help from Germany. With their assistance and troops, the Finns defeated the Reds. But the country now had a decidedly pro-Germany tinge, and the Soviets gazed at their lost Finnish territory with longing and a bit of murderous revenge.

  In the 1920s Josef Stalin inherited the not-yet-totally-fail­ing Soviet state following Lenin’s demise. He vowed to retake Finland. Perhaps most important, the vital Russian city of Leningrad stood a mere twenty miles from the Finnish border. Leningrad sits on the Karelian Isthmus, a chunk of land only about forty miles wide situated between the Gulf of Finland on the west and Lake Ladoga in the east. It was not paranoia to assume that a Soviet enemy might launch an attack from Finland down the Isthmus, and quickly over­whelm the city and its important military bases. To prevent such an attack, Stalin prudently wanted to grab a chunk of the Finnish border as a buffer zone.

  Along with the other Scandinavian countries, Finland had a white-knuckle grasp on a tenuous neutrality among the flying bar stools of Europe. In 1938 Stalin asked the Finns to promise they would not ally with Germany and to kindly attach some of their territory to Russia. At least he asked. The Finns declined. Stalin, unable to believe any country could actually resist attacking and conquering their neigh­bors, and not willing to contemplate someone might tell the truth during negotiations, immediately distrusted the Finns and assumed they were up to something. For their part, the indeed-trusty Finns could not see how their answer did not sit well with the Russian Rex. Despite warnings by Mannerheim that little Finland would get quickly overrun, its leaders refused to bow to logic and stoop to Russian servitude.

  The negotiations stalled and Stalin turned the screws, de­manding more territory and bases. The Finns turned him down every time. At the end of a meeting on November 3, 1939, Soviet foreign minister Molotov told the Finns that it was now time for the military to speak. Loudly. This is Stalinist diplomatic code for “You are about to get crushed.” When the Finns still refused, they shook hands all around, and Stalin bade his Finnish counterparts best wishes, more code for “I’m digging your graves, fellas.” He then left to twirl his mustache and plan the destruction of their country.

  WHAT HAPPENED: OPERATION “WINTER OLYMPICS”

  To the Finns it seems natural. Ski through the woods, rifle slung over a shoulder. Slip off the skis, lie on the ground, and pop off a few quick, accurate rounds. Then ski away. A sport was even created around it — the biathlon — the combination of skiing and shooting that goes together like pickles and herring. In competitions, the biathletes fire at stationary tar­gets. For a few months during the winter of 1939/40, the Finnish competitors fired at live targets, even though some­times they were even more stationary than the Olympic kind. The snowy woods of Finland were suddenly filled with the easiest targets a soldier often dreams of: Russian soldiers.

  As with most of Stalin’s plans, this one was brutally simple: line up as many soldiers and tanks he could muster on the border, pour into Finland, and overwhelm the Finns. If that wasn’t enough, they had thousands of planes to bomb the Finns back to the Ice Age. The whole romp would take no longer than two weeks, the generals assured Stalin. In fact, Stalin was more concerned that his army would roll through Finland so fast they would stumble into Sweden on the other side, angering a country that Stalin did not yet want to conquer.

  The attack concentrated on three main areas. First, the Soviets would pound the narrow Karelian Isthmus with divi­sion after division, long columns of modern tanks along with hundreds of fighters and bombers. Then five divisions would sweep north of Lake Ladoga to outflank the Finns pinned down on the Mannerheim Line, which was the Finns’ stout defensive line across the Isthmus. And much farther north, into the thinly populated Arctic regions, the Soviets would launch numerous divisions in a pointless attempt to cut the country in half.

  Stalin modeled his attack on the German blitz of Poland. His plan was brilliant except for two significant flaws: (1) he didn’t have the German army, and (2) Finland is not Poland. Hitler’s blitzkrieg was designed for fighting on the broad, flat plains of Europe. The invasion of Poland went so well in part because the Nazis had plenty of room to maneuver their huge tank columns, and the weather was warm and dry. Under those conditions, the immobile Poles were easily out­flanked, cut off, and decimated.

  But Finland is forbidding to invaders even in the summer. Winter invasion is an act of insanity. One third of the country is above the Arctic Circle, and all of it is virtually ice­bound during the winter when darkness lasts twenty-three hours a day and temperatures regularly drop to 20–30 de­grees below zero. Roads are few and narrow, incapable of handling a tank convoy. Between the roads stand deep, dark forests with snowbanks large enough to swallow a man.

  The Soviets soon found out that the toughest part of Fin­land was the Finns. The country had about 4.5 million people, hardy souls all, since that was the only way to survive in the harsh environment. Finns possess exceptional know-how of surviving outdoors in the winter. This tenacity, which the Finns called sisu, would prove their strongest weapon in their struggle with the vastly superior Soviet forces.

  Finland’s army, capable of fielding at most 150,000 sol­diers, was terribly overmatched. They had no tanks, few an­titank guns, artillery dating back forty years, and only a skeleton air force. Mannerheim knew his troops would be armed with sisu and little else. The army would fight to simply survive in the hopes that some foreign power — Britain or France — would rescue them. If not, Mannerheim said, his army would endure an “honorable annihilation.”

  On the other side, the Red Army looked pretty good on paper, like a team loaded with high-priced free agents. During 1939 they prepared for the invasion by building rail­roads close to the Finnish border, allowing them to not only put more troops in the field than Mannerheim expected but also to keep the supplies flowing. The Reds now possessed lots of everything. That was perhaps the last smart move they made. In the field, however, the Soviet army stank. It had never fought against a real army, so it was not battle tested. Stalin had purged the officer corps during the 1930s and replaced most of them with drones who lacked any ini­tiative and simply followed orders. Any risk taking was re­warded by a firing squad. Another minor problem was that the plan did not take into account the weather or terrain. Only in the Isthmus could large numbers of troops operate; the rest of the country was too heavily forested to move by truck. And although on the Soviet maps the forests didn’t look like a barrier, in reality skiing was the only feasible way to get around. No Russian troops, however, received training in ski-fighting tactics. Some were supplied with skis but not instructions on how to use them. Others just got the instruction manual without any skis. Perhaps the plan was to strap the manuals to the sol­diers’ feet and turn them loose. But since the attack was only expected to last two weeks, they didn’t bother schlepping along all that heavy winter clothing. Many of the troops simply marched along in cotton jackets with felt shoes.

  Two items reveal the level of planning that would spell trouble for the Soviets. First, they trucked in large numbers of antitank guns even though the Finns had no tanks. Second, despite not having winter coats, they were well supplied with Communist propaganda and printing presses, just in case some Finns needed a refresher on the glories of life in the workers’ paradise.

  The war started on November 26 when the Soviets fired a few artillery shells into Finland. With well-honed insouciance Stalin claimed Finnish aggression and, appropriately out­raged, declared he had to take steps to handle this “Finnish question.” On the morning of November 30, the Soviets threw four armies across the border. Six hundred thousand troops flooded into Finland over their eight-hundred-mile border. Planes roared overhead, bombing and strafing the Finnish countryside and cities, killing hundreds of civilians. It was a glorious beginning.
Watch out, Sweden.

  The Finns staggered back, outnumbered by more than ten to one. In the north, soldiers quickly donned their white winter ski jackets and homemade skis and took to skiing circles around the Soviets, machine-gunning the invaders before slipping away into the frozen forest.

  After the first day of the invasion, the Soviets trucked in a Finnish Communist, O. W. Kuusinen, who was living in Moscow since losing the Finnish civil war in 1918, and de­clared him the new leader of Finland. The puppet provided the Soviets with the refreshing change of attitude they were looking for as he rapidly agreed to the Soviet demands. Three cheers all around!

  To further boost the puppet, the Soviets created an army just for Kuusinen. Made up mostly of other Finnish Commu­nists living in Russia, the pathetic herd paraded around for the world’s press. Unable to find any other clothing, the army dressed in ancient tsarist-era uniforms pillaged from a local military museum. Outraged by this aggression and cha­rade, the rest of the entire world threw Russia out of the League of Nations and rooted for the brave little Finns.