ORIGINAL: Zorch
I respectfully disagree with most of your examples. Here goes:
7. The Winter War was not fought to a draw. The Finns were overwhelmed by numbers of tanks and artillery. All it took was competent leadership and trained soldiers to realize the material advantage. The existence of Germany saved Finland from a worse defeat.
USSR formed a puppet government for Finland it wanted to install in place after annexing the country, it got only territorial gains.
It was the planned British and French intervention to Finland, possibly followed with US, that frightened Stalin.
Germany and USSR where at the time allies, the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, Germany was blocking a lot of war material entering in to Finland for example.
Btw, here is an interesting article by Andrew Roberts about Mannerheim and Churchill from the Finnish officer corps journal.
Mannerheim used the opportunity of what he later called this ‘interesting conversation’ to complain to Churchill that the Swedish edition of Churchill’s book The World Crisis presented the story of the Finnish War of Liberation ‘in a strongly pro-German spirit’. This, according to a letter Mannerheim wrote Donner on 27 April 1936, left Churchill ‘unpleasantly surprised’ and he asked Mannerheim to write him a more accurate version for future editions.9
Churchill made the changes that Mannerheim proposed, and on 3 July 1936 Mannerheim thanked him from Helsingfors ‘or your great kindness in the matter, which, as you will surely understand., is lying us Finns close at heart.’ He signed off in his own handwriting, ‘I am, Dear Mr Churchill, sincerely yours, G Mannerheim’.10 Six days later Churchill replied that it was a pleasure to make the alteration, adding, ‘I have often thought about our talk at Patrick Donner’s house. I hoe we shall meet again, and be united in our endeavours to prevent the whole world being ruined and afterwards Bolshevised by another hideous war.’11
Of course it was not to be, and on 30 November 1939 Finland and the USSR were embroiled in the terrible Winter War. Having failed to support Finland in her struggle against Russia in 1919, in 1940 Churchill wanted to investigate ways in which the Finns could be supported in this new struggle. At a Cabinet meeting on 12 February 1940, Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, suggested sending a British Army officer, Brigadier Christopher Ling, out to Helsinki, ‘to give moral support to Marshal Mannerheim, and to provide us with full and accurate information.’12 Churchill recognized that the Finns needed thirty or forty thousand men to help fight the Russians, but told ministers that ‘it would be impracticable to pass anything like this number of volunteers through Sweden,’ which of course was neutral. He added that the Finns required ‘men who could work in the snow and of these we had so far only collected 360.’ Even though the subject of ‘Aid to Finland’ was on the agenda at every Cabinet meeting for sixty days, ‘Nothing came of it at all.’13
This particularly outraged Harold Macmillan, a Conservative MP and a follower of Churchill, who knew and admired Mannerheim and who quoted Mannerheim in his memoirs saying that the Winter War was witnessing ‘a Thermopylae every day’, and that the Finns were so short of artillery shells that they could not afford to fire them during Russian attacks on the Mannerheim Line.14 It reminded Macmillan, who had fought valiantly in the Western Front trenches of the Great War, of the terrible shell shortage crisis of May 1915 that had helped bring down the Asquith Government.
A full five months after Mannerheim had declared what Finns call the Continuation War on the USSR days after Operation Barbarossa in June 1941, Churchill was finally forced by Joseph Stalin to declare war against Finland. Churchill was privately opposed to this, as is clear from his extremely polite telegram sent to Mannerheim via the American minister in Helsinki on 28 November 1941, stating, ‘ I am deeply grieved at what I see is coming, that we shall be forced in a few days out of loyalty to our ally Russia to declare war upon Finland.’15 He hoped that Finland might be able to stop its advance against Russia at the 1939 borders of the two countries, adding, ‘I wish I could convince Your Excellency that we are going to beat the Nazis,’ and that, ‘My recollection of our pleasant talks and correspondence about the last war lead me to send this purely personal and private message for your consideration before it is too late.’
Mannerheim’s reply was similarly gentlemanly, and similarly uncompromising. ‘I thank you for your courtesy in sending me this private message. I am sure you will realise that it is impossible for me to cease my present military operations before my troops have reached positions which in my opinion would give us the security required,’ i.e. ones beyond Finland’s 1939 borders. He added that he would be ‘deeply grieved’ if his attempt ‘to safeguard Finland’ led to war with Britain, ending, ‘It was very kind of you to send me a personal message in these trying days, and I have fully appreciated it.’16 Was there ever such a polite declaration of war between two countries? When it was formally made on 3 December, Churchill stated at the War Cabinet meeting that he ‘wished it to be placed on record that in his view this declaration of war on Finland … would not assist either our cause or that of the Russians.’17
‘I have always thought that this was an error,’ Harold Macmillan later wrote of the British declaration of war. ‘It had little practical effect. It’s only object was to appease the Russians. But was the gesture necessary?’ He pointed out that the Americans did not remove their diplomatic representatives from Helsinki when they entered into alliance with Russia after Pearl Harbor, but instead did all they could to persuade Mannerheim to disengage from his alliance with Hitler, which eventually took place in September 1944 when Finland signed a peace with the Soviets that rendered up Karelia and Petsamo. The peace terms were, in Macmillan’s words, ‘hateful and wounding, but not dishonourable’ for Finland. He went on to point out that of every single one of Russia’s western neighbours, Finland was the only one to retain her freedom after the war.
; Julia Child
