Video: Finalaska: How the Americans wanted to resettle all the Finns, saving them from the USSR
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
In November 1939, war broke out between the USSR and Finland. Outside of these two countries, few doubted that the Red Army would very quickly defeat the small Scandinavian republic. In America, they were so sure of the defeat of Finland that they even developed a plan for the evacuation of the entire population of the country. They were planning to relocate them to the northernmost state, Alaska.
In early 1940, Finland suffered a major military defeat. The Red Army outnumbered the Finns in all respects, and in February the famous Mannerheim Line was broken through. Thousands of civilians fled to the rear with the army. The Finns left Karelia, leaving everything they had acquired.
At that moment an interesting project appeared in the USA. The Americans Robert Black and Leonard Sutton said that the Bolsheviks would soon seize all of Finland, so the refugees should be evacuated to Norway, and then put on ships and transported to Alaska.
In the United States, this idea received tremendous support from politicians and was covered in the press. For several decades, the President and the Senate have puzzled over how to "master" the northernmost American state, than to lure settlers there. And the prospect of resettlement there of hardworking and "reliable" emigrants from Finland looked very tempting.
The authors of the project were confident that the Finns would build houses and be able to engage in agriculture in the vicinity of the city of Fairbanks. At the same time, the resettlement from the north of Europe to the north of America should not have affected the health of people and their way of life.
Meanwhile, while the project was being discussed, the Winter War was over. Finland lost 11% of its territory, including the second largest city of Vyborg. Karelians and Finns, who previously lived here, found shelter in other regions of the country. Few people managed to go abroad, so already in April 1940 the Germans occupied neighboring Norway.
Nevertheless, a few years later, the Americans returned to the Alaska settlement project. In 1944, the USSR began to win the war, and Finland again became one of the immediate targets. Fearing that the Red Army would act on the scorched earth tactics, many Finns were ready to flee the country. Now the American General Staff has developed a plan for how to evacuate them. Overall, it was the same Black and Sutton project, but with important changes. The Americans believed that it was necessary to take absolutely all Finns out of the country. This number of people would allow the creation of the State of Finalasca.
But here, too, the plans of the Americans failed. The Soviet leadership signed a peace treaty with the Finns, and no one occupied the Scandinavian country. The American project was hidden in the archives. And Finland is famous for its beautiful nature today. This corner of Scandinavia is now called a country of a thousand lakes and islands.
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