Hitler's Nordic Ally?: Finland and the Total War 1939 - 1945

THE WINTER WAR

(30 November 1939 – 13 March 1940)

Väinö Tanner (left, 1881-1966) and Juho Paasikivi (1870-1956) on their way to negotiations in Moscow, October 1939. (SA-Kuva)

I

Prelude

A question comes up: did we have the legal and moral right to do what we did? Legally of course we did not have the right. From the moral point of view, the desire to ensure our security and reach an agreement to that effect with our neighbour was justified in our eyes.

N

IKITA

K

HRUSHCHEV

¹

An Early Soviet Approach

On 14 April 1938, the Finnish Minister for Foreign Affairs, Rudolf Holsti, received a telephone call from a certain Boris Yartsev, who officially held a mid-level position at the Soviet Embassy in Helsinki. The caller asked for a confidential meeting, saying he had an important message from Moscow that must be handed over in person.

The approach somewhat puzzled Holsti. Normally, such requests were only made by diplomats of a much higher rank than Yartsev’s. However, it turned out at the meeting that Yartsev’s post at the embassy was merely a cover. He was in truth a diplomatic messenger who received his orders directly from the highest Soviet leaders. It has later been revealed that Yartsev was really Boris Rybkin, an agent for the NKVD (a predecessor to the KGB).

Yartsev suggested to Holsti the establishing of a mutual Finnish-Soviet defence and assistance pact. The reason was Soviet fear of a German invasion, he explained, an act of war that Hitler himself had mentioned in his autobiography from 1925, My Struggle. The southernmost part of the Finnish-Russian border ran only 30km from the western suburbs of Leningrad. The Russians feared a German attack on the city would partly be directed via Finland, and they did not expect the Finns would be able to defend themselves sufficiently against a German invasion.

In reality that was only part of the problem. Shortly before the meeting serious concerns had developed in Moscow over an apparent strengthening in Finland’s relationship with Nazi Germany. In fact, Yartsev’s approach came just two days after the conclusion of a visit to Helsinki by the German Major General Goltz, who had headed a delegation attending the twentieth anniversary celebration of the German intervention in the Finnish Civil War.

Rudolf Holsti rejected the Soviet offer and guaranteed instead that Finland both could and would defend its neutrality against any invading foreign power. Still, the Russian fear for Leningrad’s security was deeply rooted and could not be easily ignored. It went all the way back to the founder of the city, Peter the Great, who in the early 1700s had announced: ‘The women of St Petersburg cannot sleep calmly as long as the Finnish border runs so close to our capital.’

The Finnish Army was small and poorly equipped, Yartsev stressed. It could soon be overrun by the Germans. After that, the road down to Leningrad along the Karelian Isthmus – i.e. the strip of land between the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga – would lie wide open (Map 1).

During a series of subsequent meetings, Yartsev tried on Moscow’s behalf to reach a compromise with the Finnish leaders. However, the Finns continued to reject the idea of a pact between the two countries. They too had a nightmare scenario in the back of their minds. It gradually emerged that Moscow also wanted to deploy Soviet troops on Finnish soil in peacetime. The Finnish expectation was that once Soviet troops had been allowed into Finland, they would be hard to get rid of again. In other words, the Finnish leaders feared that their country could end up being annexed to the Soviet Union.

The negotiations between Finland and the Soviet Union continued in deepest secrecy throughout the summer of 1938, as the proposals made by the Kremlin gradually became more clearly defined. Still, the mistrust between the parties prevailed, and on 29 August the talks broke down after the Finnish leaders had declared that any acceptance of the Soviet terms would be in breach of the Finnish Constitution. Furthermore, the proposals were incompatible with Finland’s established foreign policy which, in accordance with the other Nordic countries, was based on neutrality.

On 3 October Yartsev returned with a set of modified Soviet proposals, perhaps hoping that the Munich Agreement, which had meanwhile been signed, had softened the Finnish attitude. By signing this agreement, Great Britain and France had accepted Hitler’s annexation of the Czech Sudetenland and thereby shown how little the smaller nations of Europe could expect in the way of outside support when threatened by one of the major dictatorships. But the Finns were as unyielding as before and by mid-November the dialogue once again stalled.

Around the same time, Holsti was forced to resign from his post as minister for foreign affairs due to a personal scandal. He was replaced by Eljas Erkko who, like Holsti, represented the National Progressive Party in the then-ruling coalition government stretching across the centre of Finnish politics. Erkko, furthermore, owned Finland’s largest daily newspaper, the officially independent Helsingin Sanomat (Helsinki Messages) and was a board member of several large corporations.² He was a man of substantial influence and had, according to some, a bit too much trust in himself and his belief that the Soviet demands on Finland were just a bluff.

A Nordic or Baltic Country?

The negotiations with Yartsev had been conducted in deepest secrecy and involved only a few Finnish government members who, like Erkko, seemed remarkably unconcerned by the threat lurking beneath the surface of the Soviet demands.

On the whole there was a strong sense of optimism in Finland around this time. Compared with many other European nations the Finns had not been hit too hard by the financial crises of the 1930s. The beginning of the decade had seen some severe political confrontations, particularly an unsuccessful coup against the state carried out by the extremist right wing Lapua Movement, but things had moved forward from there at a steady pace. This in particular was due to a favourable world market for the paper and pulp industry and discoveries of large nickel and copper deposits in the northern districts of the country. At an international liberal conference held in Copenhagen in 1939, the Finnish Prime Minister, Aimo Cajander, described his country as ‘a mature democracy in which the wounds inflicted by the Civil War have largely healed.’³ Even the language dispute between the Finnish-speaking majority and Swedish-speaking minority had practically solved itself, he said.

As if underlining Finland’s Nordic affiliations, the foundation of a Finnish-Swedish military union had been negotiated during the preceding year. In fact, secret negotiations of this kind had taken place intermittently since 1923, not only with Sweden but also with the Government of Estonia – a project that was even more worrying to the Russians than Nordic military cooperation, since a Finnish-Estonian naval blockade across the Gulf of Finland could have trapped the Soviet Baltic Fleet inside Leningrad. In short, what the Finns regarded as defensive measures the Russians saw as potential aggression aimed at them, and vice versa.

So far the Finnish-Swedish negotiations had only concerned the defence of the strategically important archipelago at the mouth of the Gulf of Bothnia, called the Åland Islands, but that was merely intended as a trial balloon. It was hoped that in the longer run the union could be expanded into a larger military alliance with participation of not just Sweden but also of Norway and Denmark.

The Åland Agreement between Finland and Sweden was signed on 5 January 1939 in Stockholm by representatives of the two countries. But before the agreement could be implemented it had to be officially accepted by a number of states with coastlines along the Sea of Bothnia. Denmark, Poland and the Baltic States complied without further ado, as did the Axis Powers (Germany and its allies). Moscow was willing to let the Finns fortify the Åland Islands as well as Hogland (an island 35km off the south coast of Finland), but only if the Finns guaranteed they would defend themselves against a German invasion, specifically, and expanded their military weaponry with Soviet arms.⁴

The Finns rejected the idea. Moscow then changed tactics once more, offering to turn a blind eye to the Finnish fortification of the Åland Islands while also proposing a trade agreement beneficial to the Finns. The Russians, furthermore, offered to hand over some territories north of Lake Ladoga, if in return the Soviet Union was allowed to lease a group of Finnish islands in the western part of the Gulf of Finland over a period of thirty years.⁵ Again, the Finnish leaders turned down the proposal.

By and large, Marshal Mannerheim was the only Finnish representative at the negotiations who favoured a more cooperative approach. The marshal’s former career as an officer in the Imperial Russian Army gave him unique insight into the overall objectives of Russian strategic thinking, which in fact had changed very little despite the new regime that had come into power during the 1917 Revolution. Primarily, Mannerheim understood the Russian concern with regard to Leningrad, realising that the Kremlin might go so far as to use military force against Finland. However, the marshal’s influence on Finnish politics was limited during this period, and his advice and warnings were largely ignored.

The idea of a joint Finnish-Swedish defence of the Åland Islands resurfaced during the spring of 1939 during the Anglo-French-Soviet pact negotiations. Once again the Finnish leaders felt that unreasonable Soviet demands made any agreement on this impossible. On the whole, the Soviet attitude had become more aggressive, a development which increased from early May onwards, when the post as Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs was taken over by Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov, at the time best known for his role as Stalin’s right hand during the political purges of the preceding years.

The alliance negotiations were conducted only half-heartedly by the Soviets. Since the Munich Agreement they had, in practise, lost all confidence in French and British willingness to take a strong line against Nazi Germany. Instead, Moscow sought to protect itself in the traditional Russian manner, by turning the countries along Russia’s eastern borders into military buffer zones. This was the idea for which they had sought support during the negotiations, and it went hand in hand with the kind of imperialism that Moscow termed Internationalism, the Socialist World Revolution and so on.

The approach was at first to offer the Baltic States mutual defence and assistance treaties similar to the proposals with which the Finns had already become familiar through Yartsev. The bait was favourable trade agreements and promises of Soviet military help in case of a German attack. But the political leaders in the Baltic States feared the Soviet Union far more than they did Germany, and like Finland they wanted no cooperation of this kind with Moscow.

In the case of Finland, the disagreements soon developed into a discussion over whether the country was basically Nordic or Baltic. The issue had long been heatedly discussed within Finland and had political, linguistic, cultural and historic implications. In the current situation, however, it turned into something far more tangible and immediately pressing, namely the country’s ability to maintain its independence in the face of its mighty eastern neighbour. Erkko told the British ambassador to Helsinki that Finland refused to be lumped with ‘Romania, Poland and all that … We want to be treated as a member of the Nordic group and no other.’⁶ During the Anglo-French-Soviet pact negotiations this view was supported by the British and French diplomats, while the Russians insisted that Finland must be seen as a Baltic state.

The underlying problem was that Moscow respected the neutrality and borders of the Nordic states, while they saw the Baltic States as destined to become buffer zones for Russia. Of course the Soviets did not announce this publically, but the Finns were perfectly aware which label gave them more protection – Nordic or Baltic – so the Finnish leaders and negotiators did their best to convince Moscow that Finland did not harbour the same hostile feeling towards the Soviet Union as ‘Romania, Poland and all that’.

Still, Molotov refused to agree. In his memoirs, Nikita Khrushchev, who later became leader of the Soviet Union and at that time was already close to the centre of political action, described the atmosphere in Moscow as follows:

We made contact with Helsinki to come to an agreement. The question we raised was that in the event of war it was necessary to protect Leningrad, which was within range of artillery fire from the Finnish border … Finland really did represent a threat to us, but not in and of itself. Its territory could be used against us by enemy forces from more powerful countries.⁷

Likewise, the Finns were left unconvinced by any promises from Moscow about peace and friendliness. The void of suspicion and lack of understanding continued and would only grow stronger with time.

The Anglo-French-Soviet pact negotiations could not solve these entanglements either. Besides, the talks were soon to be lost in the sands. These developments only strengthened Molotov and Stalin’s belief that the right way to move ahead for the Soviet Union was the establishing of military buffer zones in the west. The only problem was that Moscow could not put sufficient pressure on the Baltic States as long as there was a risk it might lead to a war against Germany. Here was a hurdle that needed to be removed before the Soviet plan could go ahead.

The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact

On 23 August 1939 in Moscow, Molotov and his German foreign minister colleague, Joachim von Ribbentrop, signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Officially a non-aggression agreement, it included a secret protocol whose existence was not publically revealed until after the end of the Second World War. The protocol reached much further than the official agreement and described how the eastern parts of Europe were to be divided into so-called spheres of interest. In practice, Germany and the Soviet Union promised not to intervene in each other’s affairs and activities in areas belonging to the other party’s domain.

As the only Nordic country, Finland was included in the secret protocol, where the country was placed within the Soviet sphere of interest. Khrushchev later wrote:

Foreign Ministers Molotov and Ribbentrop, the men behind the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 23 August 1939, shake hands after the German and Soviet invasions of Poland in September that same year.

Stalin … understood that Hitler wanted to trick us but was just outfoxing himself … Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bessarabia and Finland would be allotted to us in such a way that we ourselves could decide with their government the fate of those territories.⁸

Just one week after the pact had been signed, the German Army invaded Poland from the west. Seventeen days later the Soviet Union invaded the same country from the east (Poland had been divided into a German and a Soviet sphere of interest). On 21 September the two invading armies made an agreement on how to coordinate their operations. The next day German and Soviet troops met in the Polish town of Brest-Litovsk, congratulating each other on a job well done.

On 6 October the war in Poland was over. In their respective halves of the country the occupiers immediately started suppressing the local population through political terror with widespread use of imprisonment, torture, executions and so on.

Great Britain had signed a mutual defence treaty with Poland six days before the start of the German invasion and it declared war on Germany on 3 September. However, no military intervention took place. The lack of action was underlined by London not declaring war on the Soviet Union when it launched its part of the invasion. Meanwhile, the US kept to its policy of not intervening in internal European affairs.

The smaller European countries followed the situation in Poland with a mixture of anxiety and disbelief. Previously, the dictatorial regimes in Berlin and Moscow had expressed nothing but the deepest contempt for each other. Now they were suddenly carving Eastern Europe up between them, seemingly without any animosity.

Even before the war in Poland was over, the Kremlin started expanding its activities into Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The small Baltic nations were individually approached with proposed defence and assistance treaties similar to those formerly presented to Finland, the true purpose of which was to let the Soviet Union establish military bases along the east coast of the Baltic Sea.

The treaties formally secured the independence of the Baltic States, but none of their governments believed the guarantees, particularly when they viewed them in the light of what was going on in Poland. However, the Soviet leaders backed their proposals up by deploying large numbers of troops along the borders of the Baltic countries, who one by one yielded to the pressure. Molotov later described the situation:

There was no escape for them. A country somehow has to see to its security. When we laid down our demands – you have to act before it’s too late – they vacillated. Of course bourgeois governments could not join a Socialist state with alacrity. But the international situation was forcing their decision … And we needed the Baltic States.⁹

The political leaders in Helsinki kept a keen eye on the developments in Poland and the Baltic States. They feared they were next in line to receive an offer that would be hard to refuse.

A Soviet ‘Invitation’

In the evening of 5 October 1939 the telephone rang at the Stockholm residency of Juho Kusti Paasikivi, the Finnish ambassador to Sweden. Paasikivi, who had gone to bed for the night, got up and answered the call, which turned out to come from the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs. The ambassador was asked if he could be in Helsinki the following day and he gave a confirmatory answer. What the matter concerned he was not told.¹⁰

Arriving in Helsinki as agreed, Paasikivi met with Erkko who said he had received a telegram from Moscow containing an invitation. In reality, it was a demand for him to arrive in Moscow within forty-eight hours or at least to send a plenipotentiary. The subject of the meeting would be an expansion of political and trade related connections between Finland and the Soviet Union, seen in the light of the new political situation caused by the war in Poland. The question now was if Paasikivi was willing to take on the role of plenipotentiary and travel to Moscow to negotiate on Finland’s behalf.

Paasikivi asked for twenty-four hours to consider the matter. Thus the very short deadline given by Molotov expired. He soon pressed Helsinki for a reply, reminding Erkko that the Soviet Union had ‘other means’ that could be employed if Finland refused to negotiate.¹¹

The next day (9 October 1939) the Finnish Army started gradually mobilising under the guise of carrying out ‘refresher training’.

The choice of Paasikivi as Finland’s leading negotiator in Moscow during the following years may serve as an example of the criteria used by the Finnish leaders when selecting diplomatic representatives. It was not enough that the envoy was experienced and skilled; he also had to make himself personally liked by his counterpart. In this case it seems to have worked. Molotov said about Paasikivi:

He spoke a bit of Russian but was understandable. He had a good library at home, he read Lenin. He realised that without an agreement with Russia, Finland would be in trouble. I sensed that he wanted to meet us halfway, but he had many opponents.¹²

Ideologically, Paasikivi was in no way sympathetic to Soviet Communism. He had a long career behind him in Finland’s conservative National Coalition Party and was 69 years old when the negotiations with Moscow began. In fact, he had left active politics several years before to take up the rather convenient position of Finland’s ambassador to Sweden.

One might wonder how a person such as he could get along with Stalin and Molotov. The answer is that Paasikivi belonged to the political faction known as the ‘old Finns’, a group of conservatives who still vividly remembered the period before Finnish independence in 1917. The ruling thesis among these people was that certain geographic facts had to be accepted in order to make things work smoothly in relation to Finland’s great neighbour in the east.

Other factors also pointed to Paasikivi as the right man for the job. He had no time for the anti-Russian tendencies that had characterised vast parts of Finnish society through the 1920s and 1930s. As a young man he had studied in Leningrad (when it was named St Petersburg, as it is again today). He was a huge admirer of Russian culture, knowledgeable on its history, and as Molotov points out he spoke the language. When the talks between Paasikivi and the Soviet negotiators occasionally stalled, it was primarily because of limitations in the mandate that the Finn had been granted from his superiors back home.

First Round of Negotiations

Paasikivi arrived in Moscow by train on Wednesday, 11 October 1939. The next day at 5pm the negotiations began in Molotov’s study inside the Kremlin. Paasikivi writes in his memoirs:

Stalin participated energetically in the negotiations. Got up now and then, walked back and forth seemingly following the discussion thoroughly …

Molotov was very diligent, humble with regard to social conventions, speaks matter-of-factly, briefly, avoided clichés … but he was difficult to deal with during negotiations.¹³

The instructions to the Finnish delegation set out that that no compliance must be shown towards Soviet demands on military bases in Finland or agreements on mutual military assistance. Only in an absolute emergency could Paasikivi accept handing over some small islands far off the southern coast of Finland. He was to emphasise the country’s intentions to maintain its policy of neutrality and its willingness to defend itself militarily.

These narrow limitations were somewhat in opposition to the verbal instructions Paasikivi was also given before his departure, which said he had to prevent the negotiations from breaking down. Furthermore, Mannerheim insisted that the security interests of the Soviet Union were to be respected and allowed to form the basis of a proposed compromise.¹⁴

Stalin and Molotov opened the meeting by suggesting that the frontier on the Karelian Isthmus be moved north to Viipuri, then the second largest city in Finland. As compensation the Finns were offered an area in East Karelia, which was more than twice as large but consisted of wild and uncultivated landscape. Finland was also to hand over some islands in the Gulf of Finland and had to permit the establishment of Soviet Navy and aircraft bases on the Hanko peninsula (on the extreme southwest corner of the Finnish mainland), which were to be leased to the Soviet Union for thirty years. At the opposite end of the country, the Finns had to hand over their part of the Rybachy Peninsula on the Barents Sea.

Åland came up for discussion as well, as the Soviet Union wished to fortify these islands together with Sweden. The Soviet proposals also included a mutual Finnish-Soviet assistance pact, largely similar to the ones Moscow had recently signed with Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania; but heavy Finnish resistance to this led Stalin to abandon the idea early in the negotiations. The other demands he upheld and described as minimum requests.

Paasikivi’s mandate did not allow him to initiate constructive negotiations on such a basis, so he telegraphed home asking for an extended degree of authorisation. This was refused. Subsequent conversations with him, Stalin and Molotov seem to have been little more than private discussions where both parties tried to convince the other of their peaceful and sympathetic intentions. It was leading nowhere, so on 14 October it was agreed that Paasikivi should go home, present the Finnish leaders with a memorandum of the Soviet demands and debate the situation with them.¹⁵ The negotiations were then to be resumed later on in the month.

The Second Round of Negotiations

In Helsinki the situation was still not openly discussed by the government or in the parliament, the Eduskunta. Instead, the decisions took place among a small circle of people within the cabinet, with Mannerheim participating. Based on his knowledge of Russian strategic thinking he again suggested a more compromise-seeking course. But the rest of the group supported Erkko’s dismissive attitude and were only prepared to make some smaller concessions, such as giving the Russians right of disposal over Hogland. The idea of leasing out Hanko was deemed completely unacceptable, and only some smaller border adjustments on the Karelian Isthmus could come into question.

Before Paasikivi went on his next journey to Moscow, he asked if Väinö Tanner, Finland’s foremost Social Democrat politician, could come along. The idea was willingly accepted by Foreign Minister Erkko, who in the meantime seems to have regretted choosing Paasikivi as negotiator. Since Erkko was convinced that the Soviet leaders were bluffing and had no intention of backing up their demands with military power, he regarded Paasikivi’s conduct in Moscow as unnecessarily forthcoming. Tanner, on the other hand, was known as a tough negotiator.¹⁶ It was also hoped that his presence would show the Soviet leaders that the Finnish working class agreed with the government’s dismissive approach.¹⁷

The small Finnish concessions were very far from the so-called minimum demands that Stalin had presented at the first meeting. With such a mandate there was nothing Paasikivi and Tanner could achieve in Moscow, where the negotiations were set to begin on 23 October at 6pm. The overall atmosphere was tense and the negotiations turned out unsatisfactorily. They were rounded off with the following exchange of remarks:

M

OLOTOV

: Do you wish for this to end in conflict?

P

AASIKIVI

: We naturally wish to avoid conflict, but we have to take the interests of Finland into consideration.¹⁸

Nevertheless, an important issue was clarified at the meeting: Hanko constituted a hurdle that blocked the way for further negotiation. It was there that the Germans had landed in 1918 during the Finnish Civil War in support of the White Guard, and in Stalin’s opinion it was there the Germans would land again to move east and attack Leningrad across the Karelian Isthmus.

On his arrival in Helsinki, Paasikivi advised the political leaders to offer the Russians Jussarö, an archipelago due east of Hanko, as an alternative to Hanko. The waters around these islands are important to the shipping routes through the Gulf of Finland, and a lease would give the Russians substantial strategic advances that could perhaps form the basis of a compromise. In fact, Mannerheim had previously made a similar suggestion. But any suggested solution of the kind was blankly refused by the political parties in the Eduskunta, where the situation was now debated and thus became known to the public.

The Third and Final Round of Negotiations

On the evening of 31 October 1939, Paasikivi and Tanner left Helsinki and headed for Moscow to take part in a new round of negotiations. Before their arrival, the Soviet Union publicly announced its demands, a worrying development for the Finnish side since it would now be very difficult for the Russians to accept compromises. Still, Stalin and Molotov had on several occasions cut back considerably on their proposals, and the inflexibility of the Finns clearly upset and frustrated them. The Finnish diplomat and journalist Max Jakobson writes: ‘The astonishment and disappointment that Stalin and Molotov had expressed in the course of their talks with the Finns must have been perfectly genuine … Probably they sincerely believed they had asked Finland only what was their due, and the rejection of their demands must have seemed to them an incomprehensible, almost perverse, act of defiance; after all, even most Western observers thought the Finns were behaving in a most quixotic manner – bravely, perhaps, but quite unrealistically.’¹⁹

Despite this, Stalin was eventually willing to make a compromise regarding Hanko, and as an alternative he suggested some islands close to the peninsula. It seemed a breakthrough that the Russians, on their own initiative, had dropped their demand on Hanko; but the Finnish negotiators knew there was no hope that the government in Helsinki would accept this compromise. The suggested islands were too close to the mainland and included parts of Hanko’s fortifications. Instead, the moment seemed ripe for bringing up Jussarö, if only the Finnish government would show less rigidity on the issue. In consequence, the negotiators telegraphed home to the government in Helsinki asking for permission to put forward Jussarö as an alternative to Stalin’s latest proposal.

In his memoires, Paasikivi mentions several reasons why Stalin would probably have accepted such an arrangement. But when the reply arrived from Helsinki on 9 November it was still a blank refusal.

With that the negotiations collapsed irrevocably. On 13 November Paasikivi wrote to Molotov that he and Tanner now intended to go home:

… since during the negotiations with you and Mr Stalin we have had no luck in finding a basis for the planned agreement between Finland and the Soviet Union.²⁰

The Spirit of 1939

Meanwhile, the overall atmosphere in Finland had developed into a state of patriotic excitement. For the first time in their short history as an independent nation the Finnish people stood united on a common cause. They had shown the mighty Russia they would not let themselves be intimidated. They had shown the world that small countries need not always bow and scrape before the major powers. The feeling among the general public was similar to Erkko’s. People refused to believe there would be a war but if the Red Army should turn up anyway, Finland would stand its ground. Minister of Defence Juho Niukkanen even claimed that a Soviet invasion could be held back for six months,²¹ more than enough for foreign military assistance to arrive.

Unfortunately, it was unclear where these foreign troops were supposed to come from. Finland had no guarantees from other nations, and in any case the events in Poland two months previously had shown how little such promises counted when it really mattered. The League of Nations, officially a protector of the small neutral countries, had long ago proven powerless against the big dictatorships. Great Britain and France were sympathetic towards Finland, but only as long as it coincided with their own interests. Besides, they had enough to worry about already. Both were officially at war with Germany, a phony war that might at any time break out in full force. Likewise, there was no shortage of friendly words and supportive declarations from Scandinavia, but these countries too had more than enough to worry about when it came to their own security, which was primarily threatened by Germany, not the Soviet Union.

Finland was a young nation whose leaders had not yet learned to probe the undercurrents of international political waters, the mood swings in popular opinion and the hidden agendas. And so they let themselves be impressed and led astray by grandiose statements and Nordic brotherly spirit, moral back patting from France and Britain, and displays of sympathy from the US. Also, the same countries would willingly criticise the conduct of the Soviet Union, officially as well as directly through diplomatic channels. A more critical, well-informed and alert Finnish press could perhaps have promoted a more realistic view on the situation, but here one has to remember Erkko’s powerful position as owner of the largest newspaper in the country.

Finally, there was the German stance.

The close relations between Finland and Germany are well documented. The German historian Michael Jonas describes Finland as ‘one of the most Germanophile states in the Baltic Sea area for centuries … Finland could in a state of existential emergency rely upon Germany as its traditional guardian.’²²

Another century-old thesis was that Germany would resist any expansion of Russian power in the Baltic Sea region. But there was now a non-aggression pact between Germany and the Soviet Union. Its most dangerous part, seen from a Finnish point of view, was secret, but the way the two major powers had acted during their invasions of Poland indicated that deals had been made behind the curtains which could prove fateful to the smaller states along Russia’s western border.

In fact, parts of the Finnish press had been critical and outspoken about the German attitude lately. In August, before the invasion of Poland, some of the daily newspapers claimed that Germany had sold Finland and the Baltic States to the Russians to make them accept the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Still, this was only guesswork and was blankly denied by the German Embassy. All in all, there is hardly any doubt that Germany was seen as a potential ally of Finland, both by the general Finnish population and by the country’s political leaders. In fact, this may well be the main explanation for the otherwise peculiar Finnish optimism and diplomatic inflexibility at a time when the future should have seemed dark and threatening.

This notion is confirmed by the bitterness that followed during the Winter War when German help failed to arrive. The Finnish historian Henrik Meinander even describes it as a shock for ‘the rather strong Germanophile wing of the national elite’.²³ Michael Jonas writes: ‘The abandonment of the small state in the face of an unprovoked and internationally condemned aggression was … the biggest surprise for both the Finnish elite and the country’s population at large.’²⁴

There is almost something touching about the optimism that spread all over Finland during the final few weeks leading up to the Winter War, strengthened by the feeling of finally acting as one united, unanimous people. Philosophical voices belonging to the older generation, itself safely beyond the realms of National Conscription, even claimed that a country hardly deserved to be called a real nation until it had demonstrated willingness to sacrifice life and limb to save its independence. More prosaic arguments also entered into the discussion about whether waging a war would be the right thing to do at the moment. The Finnish high command analysed the situation in Czechoslovakia over the last six months. Their conclusion was that by handing over the Sudetenland, the Czechs had ruined their own possibilities for setting up a solid defence. In consequence, they had been forced to cave in to the German threat of an invasion in March 1939 and capitulate without resistance. The Sudetenland had included the most important Czech fortifications facing west, just as the Karelian Isthmus included Finland’s main defence line against the Soviet Union (later known as the Mannerheim Line). To the Finns, the negotiations in Moscow were every bit as much about security as they were to the Soviets.

Another argument to continue the unyielding attitude was that public opinion at the moment was unanimous. No one could expect that to continue forever, not in Finland at that time. It was only twenty years since the inhabitants of the country had been murdering each other in the most bestial manner, and neighbours had locked each other up in concentration camps where thousands had lost their lives under terrible conditions. A national consensus open to the idea of self-sacrifice was not a factor the political leadership could rely on for any long period of time.

One has to remember, though, that these considerations were aimed at a war which the majority did not believe would happen – at least not for a while. And perhaps this was not as naïve as it seems in hindsight. At least the Finns were not alone in thinking this way. The view was shared by most international journalists, diplomats and other observers visiting the country at that time. If nothing else, the approach of the winter season spoke against the risk of a Soviet attack happening soon.

Not even Paasikivi and Tanner thought that war was just around the corner. On leaving Moscow they had felt as if a door was still left open to another round of negotiations. So far, Molotov and Stalin had seemed eager to reach a peaceful solution. It was unlikely that they would start a war before they had tried at least once more to negotiate.

The one person not sharing all this optimism was Marshal Mannerheim, who presented the government with a gloomy account of the military situation along the border. The army’s equipment was scarce and in poor condition. Anti-aircraft guns and heavy artillery were low in numbers; anti-tank guns were practically non-existent. Of the meagre sixty tanks the army possessed, half were old Renault F-17s bought just after the First World War. Mannerheim placed the responsibility for this predicament on the democratically elected leaders. For years they had refused to listen to him when he suggested that military budgets be raised, and now they allowed themselves to pursue a stubborn and deadly dangerous policy towards the mighty Russia.²⁵ In protest the marshal threatened to hand in his resignation. It was, however, merely a form of protest he would occasionally employ over the following years. In the end, he always remained at his post but he had at least clarified his views.

The Shelling at Mainila

The real attitude among the Soviet leaders was in direct opposition to what was imagined in Finland. When the third round of negotiations collapsed in mid-November 1939, the Kremlin concluded it was a waste of time to negotiate any further with the unyielding Finns. Instead, they started to prepare for an invasion.

The atmosphere in Helsinki remained optimistic in ignorance of the imminent Soviet threat, even on 26 November when there was a strong warning of things to come. In a note addressed to the government in Helsinki, Molotov claimed that Finnish artillery, early that same morning, had fired several rounds on Mainila Village on the Soviet side of the border on the Karelian Isthmus, 32km from Leningrad. Four Soviet soldiers had supposedly been killed and nine wounded. Molotov called the episode a provocation and an act of aggression against the Soviet Union.²⁶ To avoid more of the same he demanded that the Finnish troops be moved 25km back from the border.

A Finnish patrol had reported that guns had been fired on the Soviet side of the border at the stated point in time, but apart from that the military and government denied any knowledge of the matter. They suggested instead that Soviet artillery had released the shots by mistake and hit a target within their own territory. It was impossible that the shots could have come from the Finnish side, since Mannerheim had already pulled his artillery back out of range of the border precisely so as to avoid accusations of this kind.

To get to the bottom of the matter, the Finnish government suggested that both parties pull their troops back from the border and that a common investigation of the incident be conducted, in accordance with the Finnish-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of 1932. Molotov rejected the idea on 28 November, claiming it would weaken the security of Leningrad considerably. In fact, a suggestion of this kind was in itself an act of aggression against the Soviet Union, he said, and so Moscow now regarded the non-aggression pact as violated and annulled. The following day the Soviet Union officially severed its diplomatic connections with Finland.

The story behind the shelling of Mainila remains a mystery to this day. The Soviet claims of a Finnish provocation have long been buried, but even after the opening of the Soviet archives nothing has emerged to determine with certainty who on the Russian side ordered the bombardment and what the reason might have been. The only certain thing is that Molotov