Winter War and The Interim Peace
When the Soviet invasion started the Winter War on 30 November 1939, Oesch continued as the Chief of the General Staff in the Finnish Supreme HQ under Mannerheim. Curiously enough, there's very little study of Oesch's role in the Supreme HQ, he is usually left in Mannerheim's and Airo's shadow.
Oesch got the opportunity to show his talents as front commander in March 1940. The Red Army had surprised Finns by crossing the frozen Bay of Viipuri and gained a foothold on its western shore. Mannerheim had created the Coast Group to repel the enemy, but its first commander Major General Kurt Martti Wallenius was dismissed in disgrace after holding the command only for three days. The situation was extremely critical, and Oesch was appointed to deal with it. Finnish defenses consisted mainly of badly equipped coast defense battalions manned by older reservists and battalions hastily transferred from Lapland. Oesch was able to hold this motley and worn force together until the end of the war on 13 March 1940, causing heavy losses for the Red Army and significantly slowing its advance. Mannerheim began to regard Oesch as a man who can deal with difficult situations.
During the ensuing peace, known as the Interim Peace by Finns, Oesch first returned to his previous post as the Chief of the General Staff for few weeks, until taking the command of II Army Corps in April 1940.
Read more about this topic: Karl Lennart Oesch
Famous quotes containing the words winter, war, interim and/or peace:
“These are the small townsmen of death,
A man and a woman, like two leaves
That keep clinging to a tree,
Before winter freezes and grows black....”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“I realized how for all of us who came of age in the late sixties and early seventies the war was a defining experience. You went or you didn’t, but the fact of it and the decisions it forced us to make marked us for the rest of our lives, just as the depression and World War II had marked my parents.”
—Linda Grant (b. 1949)
“If I be left behind,
A moth of peace, and he go to the war,
The rites for which I love him are bereft me,
And I a heavy interim shall support
By his dear absence. Let me go with him.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Today we seek a moral basis for peace.... It cannot be a lasting peace if the fruit of it is oppression, or starvation, cruelty, or human life dominated by armed camps. It cannot be a sound peace if small nations must live in fear of powerful neighbors. It cannot be a moral peace if freedom from invasion is sold for tribute.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)