Finland’s early victories fired the imagination of the outside world. The so-called “Phony War” on the western front was beginning to bore people. The first month of the Winter War, however, raised the spirits of all those who were opposed to tyranny, especially since so few shots had yet been fired in tyranny’s general direction. As historian Max Jakobsen eloquently put it: “So many small nations had been bullied into humiliating surrender, the dictators had won so many cheap victories, that idealism had been left starving. … The Maginot Line might have reflected a feeling of security for those living behind it, but it could not inspire them as did the image of a Finnish soldier hurling a bottle at a tank.”1
Everybody wanted to get involved, now that it looked like Finland might have a fighting chance. Unfortunately there was a rather extensive global conflict going on, and that made it hard for well-intentioned volunteers to reach Finland. Nevertheless, spontaneous gestures of help were made from every direction. Eight thousand Swedes volunteered, and they at least were both close and acclimated. No other foreign volunteers saw as much action as the Swedes. Eight hundred Norwegians and Danes volunteered. A battalion embarked from Hungary. Italian pilots flew north at the controls of Fiat bombers. Three hundred and fifty Finnish-American volunteers sailed from New York on the Gripsholm. Among the stranger volunteers on record were a Jamaican Negro and a handful of Japanese.
From London, the incurably romantic Kermit Roosevelt, son of the Rough Rider president, announced the formation of an “international brigade” optimistically entitled the “Finnish Legion.” His recruiting bulletins were worded to imply that anyone who had ever donned a pair of skis was qualified to join, without further training or conditioning. Roosevelt rounded up a total of 230 men for his “Legion” and managed to get them to Finland by the end of March, too late to fight but not too late for them to become a major nuisance. The Finns who processed these warriors found them to be a motley crew indeed: 30 percent were declared unfit for active duty, due to age, outstanding criminal records, or gross physical infirmities. Several had only one eye, and one over-the-hill idealist showed up sporting a wooden leg, just the thing for ski combat.
Their fates were as diverse as their personal stories: sixty of them tried to return to England via Norway but managed to land in Oslo, in April, at the same time the German Army did. Some were detained as prisoners, others managed to scurry back across the border to Sweden. About 100 of them just settled in Finland, doing whatever came to hand: farming, logging, teaching English. One man ended up as the resident pro at the Helsinki golf club. Another, a journalist named Evans, obtained a post at the British Embassy and eventually became Harold Macmillan’s press secretary. The rest simply vanished from the historical record, blending in with their surroundings either in Finland or Sweden. It is even possible that a few of them eventually realized their desire to fight the Russians by serving in the Finnish Army during the Continuation War of 1941–44.
The Finnish public was certainly flattered by all this attention, and the rumor mills worked overtime, cranking out increasingly fabulous yarns about imminent and massive foreign intervention. To the average Finnish civilian, it must have looked as though the entire Western world was flexing its muscles to help “brave little Finland.”
The muscle flexing, of course, was mostly rhetorical. The sad truth was that few Western countries, no matter how sympathetic to Finland, were in any position to help out, due to overriding concerns of foreign policy. Nowhere was this more true than in neighboring Sweden, where the gulf between cold-blooded political reality and public emotion assumed the dimensions of national schizophrenia. Popular sentiment was accurately reflected in the recruiting posters of the Swedish volunteer movement:
WITH FINLAND FOR SWEDEN!
NOW THE WORLD KNOWS WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A FINN—
IT IS YOUR DUTY TO SHOW WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A SWEDE!
JOIN THE SWEDISH VOLUNTEERS!!
Apart from the extreme step of actually volunteering, hundreds of “Help Finland” projects were underway by mid-December; everyone wanted to help. Everyone, that is, except the Swedish government, who found the Finnish situation acutely embarrassing. Sweden’s ruling politicians did not dare offer enough help to make a real difference in the odds. To do so would have compromised Sweden’s neutrality at a very precarious time. Direct intervention on behalf of Finland might have meant war with Russia or, it was feared, some sort of hostile move, eventually, from the Germans. Regarding the Germans, the Swedes were being overly sensitive. It was not, after all, in Hitler’s best interests to allow a Soviet republic to be established only five minutes’ flying time away from the strategically priceless ore fields in northern Sweden. At the very least, effective Swedish aid would have prolonged the conflict, and that, too, would have been in Hitler’s interest, since the Finnish war kept Stalin tied down in the northland and turned away from the Balkans. Hitler would not have moved a finger to stop ten Swedish divisions from marching to the aid of Finland.
Matters were not helped by the hypocritical vacillations of Sweden’s leaders. The Swedish people were passionately proud of their volunteer effort, and if a plebiscite had been taken about the matter, they would probably have voted overwhelmingly to go to war for their neighbor and former province. Large segments of the Swedish population viewed their own leaders as spineless and craven. Some public officials resigned in protest and shame. When Foreign Minister Sandler spoke in the Riksdag and labeled his government’s policy “neutrality carried to the point of pure idiocy,” he was rewarded with a standing ovation.
The Germans allowed some arms to pass through the Reich, until a Swedish newspaper broke the story and Hitler initiated a policy of stony silence toward Finland, in response to frantic diplomatic pressure from his new “ally,” the USSR. Oddly enough, however, some of the strongest sympathy for Finland was manifested in Fascist Italy. Huge crowds, including hundreds of Black Shirts in uniform, demonstrated emotionally in front of the Finnish Embassy in Rome, then, carrying the Finnish ambassador on their shoulders, marched to the Russian compound and vigorously stoned it. Italy dispatched substantial shipments of military equipment, including seventeen Fiat bombers and 150 volunteers, one of whom was killed in combat. Väinö Tanner even made attempts to enlist Mussolini’s diplomatic influence to help bring about peace negotiations with Moscow. II Duce, however, brushed aside those appeals. Like Hitler, he too was happy to have Stalin’s attention turned from the Balkans, where he had dreams of aggrandizement equal to, if less realistic than, those of the führer.
In America, popular sentiment was almost totally pro-Finland. To the American people, Finland was almost a “pet” nation: a tough, brave little country that always “paid its debts on time,” spawned great late-romantic music, and enthralled sports fans with the exploits of its champion athletes. In New York, Mayor La Guardia sponsored a “Help Finland” rally in Madison Square Garden. The American Red Cross sent substantial humanitarian aid. Stokowski and Toscanini conducted benefit concerts—all Sibelius, naturally.
Franklin Roosevelt was caught in an awkward position by the conflict. He wanted to help Finland, but he was hemmed in by strong isolationist feeling in Congress and by the restrictive neutrality laws that were still on the books from the Spanish civil war. When the first reports of mass bombing of civilians blazed across the front pages of American newspapers, FDR actually contemplated severing relations with the Soviet Union. He was bombarded with so many political arguments against doing that, however, that he finally went too far in the other direction. The American ambassador in Moscow was instructed to deliver a gutless and generalized appeal for “both sides” to refrain from bombing civilian targets, stating that the U.S. government did not approve of bombing nonmilitary targets. The upshot of this policy statement, one historian acidly observed, was that “America was on record as being against evil.”2 Nevertheless, Roosevelt permitted high-level American diplomats to confer with their Finnish counterparts for the purpose of finding ways to get around the letter of the law. The outcome of these discussions was a scheme by which, under certain conditions, certain types of arms could be purchased by nations friendly to the United States, provided that the deal was made on a cash-only basis, and that any items thus contracted for were shipped from America only in vessels flying the flag of the purchaser.
Finland, of course, had precious little hard currency to spend across the ocean. Nor did it have a merchant fleet capable of convoying arms cargos across the U-boat-haunted North Atlantic. In response to enormous public pressure Congress finally offered Finland a loan of $4 million. On his own authority, Roosevelt upped the total to $10 million, on the condition that Finland would not directly purchase arms with it. This “was like offering a clean shirt to a man asking for a square meal. …”3 Or, as one congressional critic expressed it for the Record: “Because of these limitations, brave Finland cannot have anything but powderpuffs and panties. Finland asks for ammunition, we send them beans. … they ask for explosives, we send them tea. … they ask for artillery, we send them broomsticks.”4
But while Roosevelt looked the other way, Finland spent the ten million on surplus foodstuffs, which it then quickly sold for hard cash to blockaded Great Britain. Using the pounds-sterling from that deal, Finland then bought weapons from America. As a final gesture, Roosevelt did obtain one-time congressional approval to sell Finland forty obsolescent “Brewster Buffalo” fighters, but only five of them arrived in time to see action in the Winter War.
Other material aid from abroad was substantial in its aggregate total, with Sweden rather shamefacedly leading the list with 100 machine guns, 89 artillery pieces, 85 antiaircraft guns, 77,000 rifles, 18 antitank cannon, and, of course, 8,000 volunteers, many of whom saw considerable action. Other sizable shipments were dispatched by Italy, Hungary, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, France, and the Union of South Africa (twenty-five Gladiators, which did not arrive in time). The aggregate total of this aid was significant and would have marginally strengthened the Finns if it had arrived in time, but because of the political turmoil in Europe, the distances involved, and the logistical problems of merchant shipping during a war, very little came through the narrow end of the funnel in time to be of any use. Finland did, however, equip parts of several divisions with these supplies, in preparation for its second go-round with the Russians in the Continuation War.
Foreign-aid shipments could not go directly to Finland; that was the crux of the problem. Most cargos went first to French or British ports, where they were loaded onto vessels belonging to Finland’s small merchant fleet. But these ships had to wait until they could fall in with a north-bound convoy. After sailing as far north under escort as possible, the Finnish ships would break off and dash for the closest ice-free Swedish or Norwegian port. From there the arms and equipment would have to be unloaded and reloaded onto railroad cars for shipment to the Finnish border. Once there, they would again have to be unloaded and reloaded, owing to the fact that Finland had a narrower gauge of railroad track than Sweden. Finally, when the stuff did get to Finland, it had to be uncrated, assembled, and mechanically conditioned for arctic service, and the men who would use it had to translate the instructions and learn how everything worked and how to fix something when it went wrong.
This logistical nightmare was compounded by the fact that the polyglot flow of weaponry arrived in a hundred different models and two dozen different calibers, multiplying the problems of training and maintenance almost beyond the Finns’ capacity to deal with them. To cite but one example, by March 1940, there were no fewer than seven different types of hand grenade being issued to Finnish troops in the front lines, each missile with its own fuse length, quirks, and maintenance requirements. Just throwing them safely took an excessive amount of concentration and effort under combat conditions; “our lives were at stake every time we used them,” one veteran later said.5
Foreign volunteers included 725 Norwegians and a battalion of Danes that was on its way to the front the day the war ended. A conglomerate band of adventurers calling themselves the “Sisu Legion” embarked from Central Europe but never got beyond German customs. Admiral Horthy’s Hungary wanted to contribute an entire corps of volunteers originally numbering 25,000, but only 5,000 men were actually permitted to leave, and only 450 had arrived in time to see a few hours’ worth of action just before the ceasefire. The “Finnish-American Legion,” 350 midwesterners of Scandinavian descent, saw some hot action on the last day as well, in the collapsing lines around Viipuri. All in all, there were 11,500 foreign volunteers on Finnish soil, and their very presence at least had a tonic effect on morale, even if most of them were too late to have any significant military role.
The Soviet propaganda apparatus continued to crank out shrill, contorted documents attempting to convince whoever was listening that Finland was the real aggressor, that the Kuusinen government was legitimate, and the Mannerheim/Tanner/Ryti regime was enslaving the workers, etc. But the basic arithmetic of the situation defeated them; how could any rational person be convinced that Finland, with a total population of under 4 million, had ever posed a serious threat to the largest land power in Europe? Most American Reds, including those who had recently been so active on behalf of Republican Spain, chose, to their credit, to sit this one out.
One item that was issued for American consumption was a poster featuring a grotesque and unsavory caricature of Gustav Mannerheim, beneath which was printed the following copy:
BUTCHER MANNERHEIM!!
Nuts and bolts clunk into the “Help Finland” collection boxes posted in Detroit auto plants. “Not a dime for Mannerheim!” say the boys on the assembly lines. What guy would be dumb enough to lay his hard-earned dimes on the Mannerheim Line, when that Line is backed by the Hoovers and Fords and Cryslers and all the rest of the fanciest punks?
And their stooge, Butch Mannerheim, the last of the Czar’s White Guard majordomos—the Kolchaks, Denikens and Yudenitches who made a bloody shambles of the first workers’ republic’s early years. In 1918 Mannerheim massacred 30,000 Finnish workers and their wives and kids, arming his murderers with money loaned by Britain, France, and the U.S.A. in “the war to make the world safe from Socialism.” Today, the Finnish Big Bankers are paying that “war debt” in full—the debt for the slaughtered Finnish workers!!!
Most of these posters, and others like them, were torn down in disgust by the workers who read them.
Propaganda efforts by both sides were amateurish and negligible in effect. During the so-called January lull in the Isthmus fighting, the Russians began using loudspeaker trucks to broadcast propaganda programs toward Finnish lines. The Finns started looking forward to them, since the music was refreshing and the Red artillery had orders to cease firing during the playing of Kuusinen’s speeches so the Finns would not miss a word. The Finns used these interludes to “make a break for the head.”
Leaflets by the million were airdropped all over Finland, promising an improved standard of living. They were printed on such grossly inferior paper stock that the Finns, many of whom knew a thing or two about the paper industry, disdained to use them in their latrines. In the leaflets Finnish workers were promised an eight-hour day, something they had already enjoyed, by law, for the past twenty years.
Finnish leaflets were not much better, but at least they get credit for originating what would become one of the classic counterintelligence scams of all time: the mansion/swimming pool/starlet offer in exchange for an intact Soviet bomber flown in by a deserter. The “prize” was represented by a still from the 1938 film Test Pilot, depicting Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy strolling down the tarmac with Myrna Loy sandwiched between them, airplanes in the background. All the defecting pilot had to do, the leaflet intimated, was to fly his aircraft, undamaged, into the nearest Finnish base, and the good life would be his. The CIA was still dropping specimens of this same leaflet in Angola in the 1970s, only this time using photos of Miami-style mansions designed to entice Cuban pilots. There were no takers at all during the Winter War.
As the most visible symbol of Finnish grit, Field Marshal Mannerheim, despite his general hostility toward journalists, became a magnet for foreign press attention. He forbade any foreign reporters to travel anywhere on the Karelian Isthmus, saying as he signed the edict, “This is a war, not Hollywood.” Press headquarters was in the Hotel Kemp in Helsinki—according to some sources, in the bar of the Hotel Kemp. From there reporters could file stories based on the basically honest but on the whole quite terse official bulletins issued by supreme headquarters. Using these as their inspiration, the journalists added color from their own imaginations or from the general pool of rumor material. One prominent American newsman got a cable from his home office which read, “Abandon general news. Proceed at once to staff HQ. Attach yourself Mannerheim. Send stories and feature articles.” He promptly wired back: “Mannerheim impossible. Shall I try Jesus Christ?”
One foreigner who did obtain a private audience with Mannerheim during the January lull was the well-connected Sir Walter Citrine. Citrine found that the Baron spoke good English, in a “metallic, high-pitched” voice. With unusual candor, at one point in their conversation, Mannerheim told Citrine that he himself had been incredulous about early Russian casualty reports. Battles simply were not that one-sided, in his experience. When one division commander reported that his men had killed 1,000 Russian infantry in a single night, at Taipale, Mannerheim let it be known that he did not believe the figure. Two days later, a terse message came back from the division commander, stating that more than 1,000 Moisin rifles had been collected from the dead and inventoried, if the Marshal would care to come count them for himself. Mannerheim allowed himself a wintry smile as he told the story, adding that he seldom questioned the casualty reports thereafter. “I did not think that my men were so good, or that the Russians could be so bad.”6
Gustav Mannerheim was an old man, and unflattering rumors picked and nibbled at the iron stereotype. Stories circulated that he dyed his hair, maintained his manly posture with the help of a corset, donned makeup before each public appearance, etc. But flawed or not, the leadership of Gustav Mannerheim had acquired the same symbolic patina that would soon gather about the head of Winston Churchill. He was, on this and several later occasions in Finland’s history, truly “the indispensable man.”
Depending on their backgrounds, Finns in the ranks regarded the Marshal in differing lights. To the officer caste, the intellectuals, the urban middle class, and the old Swedish-Finnish aristocracy, he was a figure of almost idolatrous reverence. The working-class Finnish soldiers, on the other hand, were hardheaded individualists, incapable of idolizing anybody. Moreover, many of them harbored a well-founded suspicion that Mannerheim was still not exactly a friend of the proletariat. Even so, the strength of his leadership eventually won their loyalty if not their love. One prominent Finnish historian, Wolf Halsti, recalled overhearing a conversation, during the first week of hostilities, between two burly workmen from Turku. Mannerheim’s name came up and was greeted with a few cursory obscenities, after which one of the privates twisted his lips in a wry grin and growled, “Well, I hate to admit it, but it’s a damned good thing the old butcher-in-chief is still around for this show!”
The Baron’s headquarters was in the village of Mikkeli, about eighty-five miles northwest of Viipuri. Each day he was awakened at precisely 7:00 A.M. and arrived for breakfast, immaculately dressed, precisely one hour later. After breakfast he walked from his sleeping quarters in the Seurahunoe Hotel to the operational headquarters, in an abandoned schoolhouse a third of a mile away. At noon, he took lunch in the somewhat formal company of some trusted staff officers. The food is reported to have been good, which means it was probably Continental in nature rather than Finnish, and the conversation was invariably masculine and generalized. Private matters were not discussed, nor was the war itself. One large glass of schnapps was consumed between courses, and smoking was permitted with the postprandial coffee. Etiquette, however, forbade anyone from lighting a smoke until the Marshal had ignited his own custom-made cigar.
After lunch came more operational work. If there were no crises to deal with, and during most of January there were not, Mannerheim would permit himself an afternoon nap, usually sitting in his chair. The evening meal was as prompt as the midday repast and usually finished about 8:30. Afterward, Mannerheim went back to his office and received the final situation reports for the day. He paid particularly close attention to casualty figures, sometimes asking to hear the names of the dead one by one. He seldom got to bed before midnight and often stayed awake until two or three in the morning, in order to savor a drink of scotch—never more than two, but stiff ones—and browse through the foreign newspapers he had always enjoyed reading.
On the fifth of January, Mannerheim’s headquarters at Mikkeli was subjected to a saturation bombing that turned most of the village to ashes. Mannerheim calmly ate a final meal at his hotel, which would itself be destroyed later that afternoon, then evacuated his staff and headquarters apparatus to the little town of Otava (The Bear), eight miles to the southeast. From there, he would run the rest of the war, mostly without naps.
1Jakobsen, 175.
2Engle and Paananen, 49.
3Jakobsen, 178.
4Engle and Paananen, 51.
5Ibid., 65.
6Citrine, 105.