Office of the Historian

740.0011 European War 1939/3830: Telegram

The Chargé in Estonia (Leonard) to the Secretary of State

Tallinn, June 16, 1940—midnight.
[Received June 16—9:14 p.m.]

63. Supplementing my telegram No. 62,34a I have now been informed from official source that the Estonian Government has just accepted the Soviet’s demands and that additional troops will be stationed in Estonia and at bases not previously occupied. Further, the Government has resigned and the President of Estonia35 will form a new government.

I have been informed from another reliable source that this morning’s Estonian regular traffic airplane while en route from Tallinn to Helsinki was shot at by a submarine of unknown nationality but missed its mark and further that evidence points to the shooting down of the Finnish plane 2 days ago on which clerk Antheil was lost.36

Repeated to Riga.

Leonard
  1. June 16, 11 a.m., p. 369.↩
  2. Konstantin Pats.↩
  3. Henry William Antheil, Jr., a clerk in the American Legation in Finland, was travelling as a courier on an airplane of the Finnish Aero Company which exploded in midair at 2:06 p.m., June 14, 1940, soon after leaving Tallinn for Helsinki. There was suspicion that the disaster was caused by fire from a Soviet submarine or, more likely, from Soviet pursuit planes which were observed in the area. For information on this incident, see Finland Reveals Her Secret Documents on Soviet Policy, March 1940–June 1941 (New York, 1941), pp. 32, 49–50.↩