Foreign Minister Väinö Tanner departed Helsinki for Stockholm on February 12, the offer to cede Jussaro Island to the Russians in his pocket. The offer was obsolete before Tanner arrived. The Russians had already informed the Swedish government that, as a consequence of recent military victories, they still required the base at Hanko as well as the whole of the Karelian Isthmus.
On the morning of February 13 Tanner met with the Swedish defense minister, prime minister, and foreign minister and received their unequivocal answer to Finland’s plea. No Swedish Army units would be allowed to serve as “volunteers” in Finland, and no Allied units would be granted freedom of passage across Swedish territory. The reason given to Tanner was Swedish fear of German intervention. But the Swedes knew Hitler’s true feelings about the Scandinavian situation, so this answer was just one step removed from an outright lie. Sweden’s actual motives were cold-blooded in the extreme. Finland would be forced to make peace with Russia in order to preserve its independence, which would leave the nation of Finland in place as an armed buffer between Sweden and the Soviet giant. None of the Swedish diplomats involved in this policy found it easy to stomach, but there it was in a nutshell. The last thing Sweden wanted was to encourage further Finnish resistance.
Three days later a leading Swedish newspaper broke the story that Tanner had come, hat in hand, begging for military aid, and had been rebuffed for the most cynical of reasons. The bluntness of Tanner’s plea, and the coldness of his rejection, stirred considerable popular anger in Sweden, not to mention outrage in Finland. The outcry reached such dimensions that the king of Sweden felt compelled to make a tactful restatement of his nation’s policy. After voicing his own heartfelt regrets, he spelled it out in no uncertain terms: “I am convinced that if Sweden intervened in the Finnish war, we would be in the greatest danger of being drawn not only into the war with Russia, but also into the war between the Great Powers.” The force of such an unusual public statement from the king effectively ended the possibility that public opinion might force Swedish intervention.
There is no question but that Hitler simply wanted the whole Scandinavian problem to die down quietly. Not until he got wind of what the Allies were planning did he revise his thinking. Planning for a German operation in Scandinavia, code-named Weserubung, got under way on January 23.
On February 17 the German Foreign Office approached Tanner and offered its services as a mediator in peace talks with Russia, not aware that such talks were already under way through Stockholm. On that same date Hitler’s determination to go ahead with his own Scandinavian operation was fueled by news of the seizure of the prisoner ship Altmark by the British Navy. The formal directive to execute Weserubung was issued on March 1. Now it no longer was of much concern to Hitler how long the Russo-Finnish conflict lasted, as long as he continued to have peaceful relations with Russia while his westward adventures unfolded. The German offer to mediate was therefore withdrawn. The German ambassador in Helsinki tried to deprecate the offer, saying that it had been merely a private, as opposed to an “official,” initiative, after which Tanner angrily showed him to the door. Official German involvement in the Winter War was now terminated.
Even the revelation that Swedish aid was but a chimera had not been enough to force many Finnish politicians to face reality. Many still refused to believe that the situation at the front was as grim as it really was, or that the Russians’ new demands could be as harsh as they really were, or that the Allied expeditionary force was little better than a cruel illusion.
On February 25 the new Soviet demands were spelled out in detail: the cession of Hanko as a Russian base for a period of thirty years, the cession of all the Karelian Isthmus back approximately to the frontier line of Peter the Great, and the signing of a mutual assistance pact between Finland and the USSR.
Meanwhile the Allies were dangling sets of numbers in front of the Finns, including the supposed arrival dates of the first troops, but in view of the Swedes’ now-public declaration of neutrality, they remained disconcertingly vague about just how the troops were supposed to arrive. When pressed by the Finns, Allied representatives insisted that a public cry for help from Finland would generate such moral and political pressure that the Norwegians and Swedes would be forced to let the Allies through. None of the Finns could bring themselves to ask the logical follow-up question: Or else what?
A mood of paralysis gripped the Finnish government. Russian conditions must be modified, or else the Swedes must be persuaded to let the Allies through. Other alternatives did not bear thinking about. So Väinö Tanner went back to Stockholm and met with Prime Minister Hansson again on February 27, less because Tanner believed there was any chance of the Swedes changing their mind than because another turndown would help him rally his own countrymen to the proposition that peace must be made, at whatever cost, without further delay.
It is interesting to speculate, at this point, just what Sweden and Norway would have done if the Allies had bullied their way ashore. Documents captured later by the Germans in Norway indicate that resistance would have been pro forma rather than violent, but in actuality the entire Allied plan would have come crashing down in ruins if the rail line to Narvik were knocked out of commission. Since much of that railroad was electric, all the Norwegians had to do to negate the entire Allied effort was just to cut off the power. Not a shot would have had to be fired.
Hansson told Tanner just what Tanner expected, by now, to hear. Finland must make peace on whatever terms the Russians would grant, consistent with its continued existence as an independent state. To palliate the message, Hansson did tell Tanner that Sweden was willing to consider a defense alliance once peace was concluded, as well as significant economic aid to Finland. And that was what Tanner had really come to Stockholm to hear: something positive, something positioned in time beyond the passions of the war, that would happen as a result of making peace now with the Russians.
By the time Tanner met again with the rest of the Finnish government on February 28, the Soviets had demanded a Finnish response to their terms and set a deadline for it: March 1. The Allies had also revealed the true scope of their intervention effort, and it was hardly inspiring. Several key, wavering politicians now swung over to Tanner’s viewpoint. A new and hopelessly pessimistic assessment of the military situation arrived the next day from Mannerheim, and with it the last holdouts for continued resistance reluctantly joined the peacemakers. On February 29, word was sent to the Russians that Finland “accepted the terms in principle” and was willing to enter into immediate negotiations in Moscow.
When word of the Finns’ commitment to sue for peace reached the Allies, it provoked responses ranging from the quietly hysterical, in Britain, to the bizarre, in France. French prime minister Daladier had all but mortgaged his government on the scheme to aid Finland, hoping to turn an unpopular war into an anti-Bolshevik crusade that would engage the passions of the French right wing at the same time as it moved the main theater of war about as far from France as it could get. On the night of February 29, without bothering to consult the British, Daladier sent an infamous cable to Helsinki promising 50,000 French troops in Finland by the end of March, and 100 bombers to be dispatched as soon as the Finns openly asked for help. The offer was, naturally, contingent on continued Finnish resistance.
This offer had no basis whatsoever in reality, and Daladier must have known it. Instead of calling his bluff, when they found out about it, the British, too, fell victim to the spell of the north and contemplated launching their amphibious expedition without bothering to obtain permission from Sweden and Norway. Fortunately for Finland, certain British officials insisted that the size and timing of the operation not be inflated as Daladier had done with the French statistics, and it was this little bit of sobering honesty that kept the Finns from grasping at new illusions.
Nevertheless Daladier’s cable had quite an impact. When the Finnish government convened on the morning of March 1, everyone was, for a little while, taken in by it. The original acceptance message to Moscow was hurriedly modified to buy some more time, but the Swedish foreign minister refused to transmit it to Moscow unless the Finns added a sentence from their original response, agreeing “in principle” to Moscow’s terms. Pumped up by visions of Daladier’s imaginary bomber squadrons and divisions of chasseurs alpins, the Finns balked, and the entire peace process froze in its tracks.
Disillusionment arrived in the form of a British “clarification” of Allied intentions. Daladier’s “50,000” men were explained away as being the total number of soldiers involved in the whole venture, not a separate French expeditionary corps; the British statement further added that only the first echelon of that force, a mere 12,000 men, could possibly arrive on Finnish soil before mid-April.
It was clear now to every politician in Helsinki that the proposed “aid” was neither large enough nor timely enough to materially improve Finland’s prospects on the battlefield. The Finns’ only hope was that intelligence of the Allies’ expedition might have made the Soviets moderate their demands. The “open appeal” to the Allies had to be made by the end of March 5 if the plan were to be put into motion in time for anything at all to reach Finland. But March 5 came and went without any word from Moscow. The only message that did reach the Finnish cabinet was from Mannerheim, informing them that the tactical situation around Viipuri was deteriorating by the hour and saying flatly that he could no longer guarantee being able to hold the city.
Thus the Finns came full circle, and after having their hopes cruelly raised and dashed were forced to send to Moscow the “agreement in principle” statement that had been drafted originally on March 1. Daladier’s contemptible little gesture had wasted five days and cost the lives of thousands on both sides.
A Soviet reply to the March 5 note arrived within hours. There would be no armistice before the final agreement was reached. The Red Army steamroller was in high gear now, and it would continue to exert pressure on the Finns. On March 6 the Finnish peace delegation was chosen: Paasikivi; Ryti; a general named Walden, to represent the Finnish military; and a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Diet, Voionmaa by name, to show the flag of domestic politics. The four men and their staff went to Moscow via Stockholm, arriving on March 7. They were armed with only one bargaining chip: the Allies had agreed to keep their offer open until March 12.
It was to the Finnish delegates’ credit that, inexperienced though they were in the arena of international affairs, they were ultimately able to look beyond their nation’s immediate and emotionally wrenching situation and perceive the Allied offer for the hypocritical sham that it was. In reaching that conclusion they were no doubt prodded by the recent examples of two other small democracies that had trusted in offers of Allied protection: Czechoslovakia and Poland. Although the main reason for spurning the Allies was simply that their offer was too little and came too late, the Finns had come to grips with the fact that Finland’s cause was now merely a pretext for the implementation of other, regional strategies.
If nothing else, the rejection of Allied aid showed that basic good sense had not deserted the Finns. When the same, or very nearly the same, Allied strategy went into high gear after the German attack on Norway, it proved an utter disaster, and there is no reason to think it would have worked out any better in March. The Allies couldn’t even hold on to one little port city, Narvik, against aggressive German countermeasures conducted by moderatesized forces. It is likely that if the Allies had deployed 50,000 men along the railroads from Narvik to Finland, the net result would have been a debacle on the same order of magnitude as Dunkirk or Crete.
When the Finns arrived, they were ready to dicker over terms. Their first shock was the realization that there would be no dickering. From the opening moments of the first session, on March 8, the Finns were presented with two choices: sign or keep fighting. Stalin did not even bother to attend, a sure sign that the Russian position was firm and nonnegotiable.
Ryti’s opening statement amounted to a plea for lenient terms as the groundwork for harmonious relations in years to come. Molotov was frigid in his reply. Finland had proven itself to be a tool of the British and French imperialists, just as Stalin had feared back in November. Molotov pointed out that the London Times and Le Temps in Paris had both openly advocated military action against the Soviet Union. Ryti protested that his own government could hardly be held accountable for rabble-rousing statements that appeared in the foreign press. True, interjected Zhdanov, but the Finns had never bothered to repudiate such statements. Molotov then grudgingly conceded that perhaps Finland may not have wished to be a pawn of the Anglo-French strategists, but nevertheless that was how it had worked out and it was from that diplomatic and strategic fact that the current discussions would have to proceed.
He then read out the peace terms. To their horror the Finns now learned for the first time that the terms would be even harsher than they had originally thought. In addition to the border changes on the Karelian Isthmus and the cession of Hanko, Finland would have to cede the entire Rybachi Peninsula in the far north and a band of territory in the Salla district, and would be required to build at its own expense a rail line connecting the Murmansk Railroad with the strategic port of Tornio on the Swedish frontier at the end of the Gulf of Bothnia. The stunned Finnish delegates protested that they could not possibly agree to such terms without further consultations with their government in Helsinki, and the discussions were adjourned so they could do that.
These new demands were heatedly discussed in Helsinki on March 9. Outraged though they were by the new stipulations, the Finns were even more alarmed by the latest situation reports from the Isthmus. Battalions were down to the strength of companies, artillery ammunition was exhausted, and the weapons themselves were worn out to the point that many Finnish guns no longer had much rifling in their barrels.
Molotov had apparently never communicated all of his demands to the Swedes for fear that the cession of territory in central Finland and that curious demand for a railroad might be interpreted as a threat to Sweden and dampen Swedish enthusiasm for a quick peace settlement. But it was too late to try the Swedes again.
A message was therefore sent to the Finnish delegation in Moscow: “Headquarters has furnished situation report; not sanguine about chances of carrying on.… As continuation of war on the basis of aid promised is difficult, and as contact with you is slow, we authorize you to decide the matter in all respects, provided you are unanimous.”
Mannerheim thought that wording was not urgent enough and insisted that a second message underscoring the desperate military situation be sent as a follow-up. Neither message had reached Moscow, however, by the time the Finns had their next meeting with Molotov, on March 10. They tried to bargain for more concessions, but Molotov was unwilling to discuss substantive changes. If the Finns did not agree, he pointed out cynically, he could always call the Kuusinen government back from the dead, sign a quick agreement with them, and let the military chips fall where they might. When Paasikivi pointed out that even Peter the Great had paid a large monetary compensation for his Finnish border back in 1721, Molotov snapped, “Then write a letter to Peter the Great—if he orders it, then we’ll pay compensation!”
The formal permission to sign, on the basis of the new and most severe set of Soviet demands, reached the Finnish delegation on March 11. Ryti tried once more to move Molotov toward some kind of concessions, however minor, by pointing out that Russia had not militarily conquered most of the territory it was demanding. Molotov, in tones of contempt, replied that if the Finns wished, they could come back and discuss the matter after the Red Army had taken those places. Yielding to the inevitable, the Finnish delegation started drafting the text of a peace treaty that incorporated all of the Russian demands.
Meanwhile, in Paris and London the Allied leaders were becoming frantic about the possibility that the Finnish “appeal” would not be made. Their precious Scandinavian front was slipping farther away from them with every passing hour. Daladier, for one, knew that his own government would not survive the collapse of the project, and he exerted frantic pressure on London to do something, anything, to keep the whole shabby business alive. On March 11 matters reached a crisis. At the insistence of Finnish president Kallio, Finland made yet one more appeal to Norway and Sweden about the right of Allied passage. No one expected an eleventh-hour change of heart on the part of those neutral countries, but then, this appeal was being made for the record, to generate something that could be used to cushion the shock of public response when the severity of Russian terms became known. Finland’s government had had no choice, the reasoning would be, because there was no way the Allies could get there in time. All the Scandinavian parties involved in this last-minute two-step understood it for what it was, but to the Allies it looked like the Finns were wavering.
On the same day, March 11, the French ambassador demanded that the British launch their expedition without Norwegian and Swedish consent. Ironside, who had maintained a fairly rational attitude until these new developments looked about to generate a serious Allied setback, now came out in favor of just bullying through regardless of any neutral opposition. Admiral Evans, the Royal Navy representative on the Chiefs of Staff Committee, agreed. Only the Royal Air Force delegate, Air Marshal Newall, kept his perspective, saying: “I think the whole thing is hare-brained.”
Later that day, both Chamberlain and Daladier announced in Parliament that their governments stood ready to help the Finns “with all the means at their disposal.” Chamberlain called in the Finnish ambassador and told him that if the appeal were made, a dozen bombers would fly to Finland immediately. The only question remaining, assuming that the Finns made their public appeal, was whether or not the big convoy would embark without the consent of Norway and Sweden. Ironside, who thought this matter had already been decided, was shocked to find that the cabinet was still arguing the question as late as the morning of March 12. Privately he described them as “a flock of bewildered sheep faced by a problem they have consistently refused to consider.… I came away disgusted with them all.”1
The final decision was a compromise: to launch the Narvik part of the operation but to hold back the southern wing of it until German response offered a provocation for such action. The orders issued for this action, however, were so vague, so curdled with contradiction, and so open to interpretation that they could be studied as a textbook invitation to military disaster. They surely reflected the confusion and duplicity of motive that characterized this entire effort from the start.
One extract from these orders should suffice to give an idea of their incoherence:
It is the intention of His Majesty’s Government that your force should land, provided it can do so without serious fighting.… Fire on Norwegian or Swedish troops is only to be opened as a last resort. Subject to this, you are given discretion to use such force as may be required to secure the safety of your command.… It is not the intention of the government that this force should fight its way through Norway or Sweden.… The decision as to the size of the force to assist the Finns and the terms for its dispatch are left to your discretion. It is important that the force to assist the Finns should be dispatched as soon as possible.2
Some clarification of this prose masterpiece is obtainable from reading the minutes of the meeting held by the ministers and their commanders on March 12. Evidently the expeditionary force was expected to elbow their way past the Norwegians and proceed to the Swedish border, where they would demand passage. Should this be refused, the troops were not expected to fight their way forward but simply to encamp where they were. The possibility of becoming embroiled in a shooting war with Russia, though quite real in the event that Allied soldiers went into Finland, was dismissed as a mere annoyance. The force would bluster its way ashore, there would be no violent opposition, Hitler would be goaded into a blundering counterattack, and everybody could get on with the real business at hand: fighting the Germans.
As the clear-eyed General Pownall noted on March 13, “Of the four or five divisions that might have been sent… not one division was intended for Finland—perhaps a brigade or two, if they were lucky.… The rest were simply for occupying and holding the iron-ore mines.… they weren’t intended to go anywhere near Finland. It is really a most dishonest business.”3
Fortunately, the Finns sensed that dishonesty and did not make the appeal that would have set the whole sorry enterprise in motion. On March 12, the Finnish government met to reach its final decision, based on the news from Moscow. Two ministers balked at the last minute, stunned by the severity of the terms, and tendered their resignations rather than their signatures. As President Kallio signed the document that gave the Moscow delegation authority to conclude the war on Moscow’s terms, he growled, “May the hand wither that is forced to sign such a document as this.” A few months later, the old man suffered a stroke that left him paralyzed in his right arm.
The actual treaty was signed in Moscow in the early hours of March 13. A cease-fire was scheduled to go into effect at noon, Leningrad time.
1Ironside, 226–27.
2Upton, 144.
3Ibid., 145.