The Winter War was fought in the four months following the Soviet Union's invasion of Finland on 30 November 1939. This took place three months after the German invasion of Poland that triggered the start of World War II in Europe. Sweden did not become actively involved in the conflict, but did indirectly support Finland. The Swedish Volunteer Corps provided 9,640 officers and men. The Swedish Voluntary Air Force also provided 25 aircraft that destroyed twelve Soviet aircraft while only losing six planes with only two to actual enemy action and four to accidents. Sweden also provided a portion of the weapons and equipment used by the Finns throughout the war.
Franco-British support was offered on the condition it was given free passage through non-belligerent Sweden instead of taking the road from the Soviet-occupied Petsamo.
According to the dominant view in Sweden's foreign ministry, Finland's foreign policy had, since its independence and 1918 civil war, been "unsteady and adventurous". In addition, Finland's domestic politics were viewed with great suspicion by Swedish Social Democrats. After the Socialists' defeat in the civil war, anti-parliamentarism and anti-socialist policies dominated Swedish impressions of Finland. Cooperation with Finland had in the 1920s and 1930s primarily been advocated by fringe right-wing politicians and military officers. Both to the right and to the left, a closer cooperation with Finland was seen as a means to counter the hegemonic position of the Social Democrats in Sweden.
After the Abyssinia Crisis, both Finland and Sweden were forced to adjust their foreign policies, as the League of Nations seemed to offer only a hollow protection against foreign aggression. In the Baltic region both the reborn Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were seen as likely aggressors, eager to regain territories lost as a result of World War I, and likely to want to expand their influence further, if possible. Finland re-oriented its foreign policy towards Scandinavia and a neutralist policy of the Swedish type. The detailed plans for military cooperation were supplemented by intensified contacts between diplomats and politicians. Social Democrats under Väinö Tanner were rehabilitated and included in the cabinet. Finland's embassy in Stockholm was deemed the most important, and Juho Kusti Paasikivi became ambassador there.
Even though central politicians and officials had been converted and convinced of the necessity for a closer Swedish–Finnish cooperation, parliamentarians and prominent individuals did not change their anti-Swedish or anti-Finnish attitudes as easily. Impressions made (in both countries) in connection with Finland's independence, civil war, the Åland crisis, language strife, and the Lapua Movement all stuck. These impressions, in turn, were compounded by a tendency in Sweden to emphasize the danger of Nazi expansionism and to view the Soviet Union with a great deal of goodwill: in Finland, however, the converse view was dominant.
The Nordic trend did not officially allow Swedish participation in security management of the Gulf of Finland with Finland. However, behind the scene, the general staff of Sweden and Finland had negotiated secretly the Gulf of Finland blockade plan in 1929. Sweden agreed that it would first suggest the Gulf blockade to the Estonians in 1930. Officially Sweden would not participate, but it would give materiel and auxiliary troops if the Soviet Union attacked.[1]
Litvinov's demise as Soviet Foreign Minister in March 1939 signaled an increasing tension and danger for Finland and the Baltic countries, and indirectly for Sweden. Litvinov was known as being friendly towards the West, whereas the new minister, Molotov, had made a more aggressive impression. Litvinov's half-promises to accept and support joint Finnish–Swedish provisions for the defense of Åland against the potential German threat were not upheld by his successor. As a consequence, Soviet-leaning ministers in Sweden, such as Ernst Wigforss and Östen Undén, proposed Sweden's withdrawal from these plans. Parliament agreed, being eager to continue Sweden's successful policy, since 1812, of non-confrontation towards Russia.
The political response to the Soviet invasion
In the face of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and the following Soviet aggressions against Poland and the Baltic countries, Finland's situation seemed increasingly dangerous. On 4 October Finland's government asked if Sweden was prepared to contribute to Åland's defense with military means. The following day, Molotov invited a Finnish delegation to Moscow, with Sweden's parliament being informed the day after. On 12 October it turned out that the political support was deemed insufficient in Sweden for a military engagement on Åland: the Rightist Party was in favor, the Social Democrats were split, and a majority of the Farmers party (Bondeförbundet) and all the Liberals were opposed. The opposition to Swedish military assistance on Åland was strengthened by the fear that intervention would become extended to Mainland Finland, which few parliamentarians would support.
Publicly, Finland was supported, but Finland's Foreign Minister Elias Erkko was informed that Swedish troops were not to be expected. It remains controversial to this day whether he delivered this message to his colleagues and his president.
The message perceived by public opinion in Finland, as well as in Sweden, thus differed greatly from the Swedish government's intentions. For two months Finland literally fought for her national survival, but by the end of January 1940, the Soviet Union gave up its plans for a reconquest of the whole of Finland. It was now deemed sufficient if Finland ceded its industrial heartland, including its second largest city Viipuri (Viborg, currently Vyborg). This would mean that the Soviet Union might gain much greater territory than the Red Army had been able to seize control of by military means. Through the so-called Statsrådsdiktamen, Sweden's king helped the public perception of Sweden's intentions converge with the government's intentions.
Message from the King
Swedish Volunteer Corps recruitment poster. Translated "Finland's cause is yours".
In the "Statsrådsdiktamen" on 19 February 1940, Sweden's king Gustaf V publicly rejected pleas from Finland's government for military intervention in the Winter War to help defend Finland against the Soviet invasion. This statement from the king was aimed at pressuring Finland to accept harsh Soviet peace conditions and to quiet a strong Swedish activist public opinion advocating participation in the war. The statement had this effect, but was also to produce substantial bitterness in Finland.
During the war, Sweden's government rejected a total of three formal pleas from Finland's government to engage militarily in Finland's defense against the Soviet Union. Detailed plans for Swedish deployment along Finland's border had been made ten years before, and they were regularly updated in secret contacts between the General Staffs of the two countries. However, no formal alliance had been concluded, and a proposed official recognition of cooperative defense of the de-militarizedÅland had been rebuffed by Sweden's parliament in June 1939.
Swedish military's position
Swedish volunteers during the Winter War.
One of the main considerations that led the Swedish government to declare Sweden a non-belligerent state was concern that they might otherwise lose control of the internal situation in Sweden. The Soviet demands on Finland in the months prior to the outbreak of war had roused public opinion. While there had been large demonstrations in support of Finland, Russia was a traditional enemy, and fear of the Russians had been a part of the Swedish mindset since 1719, when Russian galleys burned Swedish coastal communities during the Great Northern War. Therefore, there was a strong feeling that it was better to defend Sweden on Finnish soil.
Swedish military strength was at one of its low points due to the grand disarmament of 1925. The rearmament program decided in 1936 had not yet had any substantial effect on the armed forces. The army had only 16 tanks apart from a small number of tankettes armed with machine guns. Air defence guns were few and the air force had only 36 Gloster Gladiator fighters. Modern artillery was very limited, short range guns of the Great War era or older were the norm. Worse was that no modern military material was available for purchase, as the producing countries regarded exports secondary to equipping their own armed forces.
Even worse, training had been very reduced in a 1925 decision to cut back on the armed forces, and most units had no winter training and had to leave army units needing to conduct rehearsal training after a mobilization.
Within the Swedish military, officers who had been volunteers in the Finnish Civil War were now senior officers, most notably Axel Rappe, a member of the General Staff, and Archibald Douglas, commander of the Northern Army Corps.
The belief that Sweden was best served by a defence in Finland was enacted primarily by Douglas, whose Northern Army Corps comprised around 26,600 men who had been mobilised to guard the Swedish border with Finland in case the Russians invaded.[2][3] He reasoned that the best way he could defend Sweden was to move into Finland and meet the Russians there. When the Russians had reached a certain point inside Finland, the whole Northern Army Corps would move across the border and take up positions along the Kemi river, all without approval of the Swedish government.
The fact that the Swedish government did not get news of Douglas' plan right away makes it entirely possible that the plan could have been implemented. However, when they found out the plan was scrapped although Douglas was allowed to retain command and later rose to become Chief of the Army.
The Northern Army Corps, barred from entering Finland, did not end attempts at aid, however. Swedish first line units would sometimes lose equipment and material that was needed on the other side of the border. The willingness to help out can be traced to officers in charge of Swedish supply units likening the Swedish Army Stores at Boden as a Finnish supply base.
It is known that at least 15,000 Swedes volunteered to fight alongside the Finns, with 10,000 accepted for training and 8,000 actually went to Finland in organised units before the war ended, which can be compared to the largest contributor to the International brigades, France, during the entire Spanish Civil War. In addition, a smaller number of individuals joined the Finnish army units or operated mechanical shops repairing equipment, mainly in the Swedish speaking south of Finland. The Swedish government and public also sent food, clothing, medicine, weapons and ammunition to aid the Finns during this conflict. The military aid included:[4]
135,402 rifles, 347 machine guns, 450 light machine guns with 50,013,300 rounds of small arms ammunition;
17 fighter aircraft, 5 light bombers, 1 DC-2 transport aircraft turned into bomber, and 3 reconnaissance aircraft, totally comprising 1/3 of the Swedish air force at the time.
Several books written about the Winter War include reference to the Swedish volunteers and many older Finns today still acknowledge their contributions.
Aftermath
The Winter War also helped reaffirm the Swedish position. Aid to Finland had been as much about aiding a neighbour as about neutralising the public opinion calling for active intervention in the war. It also helped to establish the political priorities before the events of 9 April 1940, when Germany invaded Denmark and Norway. The goal was now fixed on keeping Sweden out of the growing European conflict; if they had not gone to war to defend Finland, there was no way that they would do it for Norway. The last surviving Swedish veteran of the war, Bengt Essén, died in August 2020.[5]
The Continuation War, also known as the Second Soviet-Finnish War, was a conflict fought by Finland and Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union during World War II. It began with a Finnish declaration of war and invasion on 25 June 1941 and ended on 19 September 1944 with the Moscow Armistice. The Soviet Union and Finland had previously fought the Winter War from 1939 to 1940, which ended with the Soviet failure to conquer Finland and the Moscow Peace Treaty. Numerous reasons have been proposed for the Finnish decision to invade, with regaining territory lost during the Winter War regarded as the most common. Other justifications for the conflict include Finnish President Risto Ryti's vision of a Greater Finland and Commander-in-Chief Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim's desire to annex East Karelia.
Finlandization is the process by which one powerful country makes a smaller neighboring country refrain from opposing the former's foreign policy rules, while allowing it to keep its nominal independence and its own political system. The term means "to become like Finland", referring to the influence of the Soviet Union on Finland's policies during the Cold War.
The Winter War was a war between the Soviet Union and Finland. It began with a Soviet invasion of Finland on 30 November 1939, three months after the outbreak of World War II, and ended three and a half months later with the Moscow Peace Treaty on 13 March 1940. Despite superior military strength, especially in tanks and aircraft, the Soviet Union suffered severe losses and initially made little headway. The League of Nations deemed the attack illegal and expelled the Soviet Union.
The Finnish Army is the land forces branch of the Finnish Defence Forces. The Finnish Army is divided into six branches: the infantry, field artillery, anti-aircraft artillery, engineers, signals, and materiel troops. The commander of the Finnish Army since 1 January 2022 is Lieutenant General Pasi Välimäki.
The Finnish Air Force is one of the branches of the Finnish Defence Forces. Its peacetime tasks are airspace surveillance, identification flights, and production of readiness formations for wartime conditions. The Finnish Air Force was founded on 6 March 1918.
Sweden maintained its policy of neutrality during World War II. When the war began on 1 September 1939, the fate of Sweden was unclear. But by a combination of its geopolitical location in the Scandinavian Peninsula, realpolitik maneuvering during an unpredictable course of events, and a dedicated military build-up after 1942, Sweden kept its official neutrality status throughout the war. At the outbreak of hostilities, Sweden had held a neutral stance in international relations for more than a century, since the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1814 and the invasion of Norway.
Operation Silver Fox from 29 June to 17 November 1941, was a joint German–Finnish military operation during the Continuation War on the Eastern Front of World War II against the Soviet Union. The objective of the offensive was to cut off and capture the key Soviet Port of Murmansk through attacks from Finnish and Norwegian territory.
German–Soviet Union relations date to the aftermath of the First World War. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, dictated by Germany ended hostilities between Russia and Germany; it was signed on March 3, 1918. A few months later, the German ambassador to Moscow, Wilhelm von Mirbach, was shot dead by Russian Left Socialist-Revolutionaries in an attempt to incite a new war between Russia and Germany. The entire Soviet embassy under Adolph Joffe was deported from Germany on November 6, 1918, for their active support of the German Revolution. Karl Radek also illegally supported communist subversive activities in Weimar Germany in 1919.
Swedish neutrality refers to Sweden's former policy of neutrality in armed conflicts, which was in effect from the early 19th century to 2009, when Sweden entered into various mutual defence treaties with the European Union (EU), and other Nordic countries. Sweden's previous neutrality policy had originated largely as a result of Sweden's involvement in the Napoleonic Wars during which over a third of the country's territory was lost in the Finnish War (1808–1809), including the traumatic loss of Finland to Russia. From this point onwards, Finland remained a part of Russia until it gained independence in 1917. Resentment towards the Swedish king Gustav IV Adolf who had consistently pursued an anti-napoleonic policy and thereby caused the war, precipitated a coup d'état known as the Coup of 1809. The new regime deposed the king and introduced the Instrument of Government (1809), later formulating a new foreign policy which became known as The Policy of 1812.
Finland participated in the Second World War initially in a defensive war against the Soviet Union, followed by another, this time offensive, war against the Soviet Union acting in concert with Nazi Germany and then finally fighting alongside the Allies against Germany.
The Ryti–Ribbentrop letter of agreement was a personal letter from President of Finland Risto Ryti to German Führer Adolf Hitler signed on 26 June 1944. It was sent during the Soviet Vyborg–Petrozavodsk Offensive, which had started on 9 June and threatened to knock Finland out of the Continuation War.
Christian Ernst Günther was Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs in the Hansson III Cabinet. The unity government was formed after the Soviet attack on Finland in November 1939, the Winter War, and it was dissolved on 31 July 1945.
The Interim Peace was a short period in the history of Finland during the Second World War. The term is used for the time between the Winter War and the Continuation War, lasting a little over 15 months, from 13 March 1940 to 24 June 1941. The Moscow Peace Treaty was signed by Finland and the Soviet Union on 12 March 1940 and it ended the 105-day Winter War.
The Spirit of the Winter War is the national unity that had been credited with having saved Finland from disintegrating along class and ideological lines under the invasion of the Soviet Union during the Winter War from November 30, 1939, to March 13, 1940.
The background of the Winter War covers the period before the outbreak of the Winter War between Finland and the Soviet Union (1939–1940), which stretches from the Finnish Declaration of Independence in 1917 to the Soviet-Finnish negotiations in 1938–1939.
Foreign support in the Winter War consisted of materiel, men and moral support to the Finnish struggle against the Soviet Union in the Winter War. World opinion at large supported the Finnish cause. The Second World War had not yet begun in earnest and was known to the public as the Phoney War; at that time, the Winter War saw the only real fighting in Europe besides the German and Soviet invasion of Poland, and thus held major world interest. The Soviet aggression was generally deemed unjustified. Various foreign organizations sent material aid, such as medical supplies. Finnish immigrants in the United States and Canada returned home, and many volunteers traveled to Finland to join Finland's forces: 8,700 Swedes, 1,010 Danes, about 1,000 Estonians, 850 Ukrainians, 725 Norwegians, 372 Ingrians, 366 Hungarians, 346 Finnish expatriates, more than 20 Latvians and 190 volunteers of other nationalities made it to Finland before the war was over.
During the early stages of World War II, the United Kingdom and France made a series of proposals to send troops to assist Finland against the Soviet Union during the Winter War, which started on 30 November 1939. The plans involved the transit of British and French troops and equipment through neutral Norway and Sweden. The initial plans were abandoned because Norway and Sweden declined transit through their land for fear that their countries would be drawn into the war. The Moscow Peace Treaty ended the Winter War in March 1940, which precluded the possibility of intervention.
Finnish–Estonian defence co-operation began in 1930 with a secret military pact between Finland and Estonia against the threat of the Soviet Union. Open co-operation ended in 1939, as the Soviets pressured the Estonian government, but it continued secretly with information-sharing during the Winter War.
The Swedish Intervention in the Winter War was a short-lived but successful attempt by the Swedish Volunteer Corps, along with other Nordic volunteers, to prevent a Soviet invasion of Finland during the Winter War. The volunteers only engaged in a few skirmishes on ground and in the air, the only major battles they participated in being the battles of Salla and Honkaniemi. The term "volunteers" have often been used to describe the Nordic military support for Finland in the Winter War, although involvement by the government of Sweden has been debated over time. Nevertheless, the Swedish military sent enormous amounts of aid to Finland, including:
Sir George Gordon Medlicott Vereker was a British diplomat.
References
↑ Leskinen, Jari (1999). "Suomen ja Viron salainen sotilaallinen yhteistyö Neuvostoliiton hyökkäyksen varalta 1930-luvulla". In Leskinen, Jari; Juutilainen, Antti (eds.). Talvisodan pikkujättiläinen (in Finnish) (1sted.). Werner Söderström Osakeyhtiö. pp.127–140. ISBN951-0-23536-9.
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