740.0011 European War 1939/11359: Telegram
The Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Steinhardt) to the Secretary of State
[Received 8:59 p.m.]
1050. The Finnish Minister called on me yesterday to say good-by. He said he did not intend to enter the Government in Helsinki but would return to private life in order to attend to his neglected interests. The former Finnish Minister to Tallinn and Riga, who has been in Moscow for some time assisting the Minister, will act as Chargé d’Affaires and may or may not subsequently be appointed Minister.
With respect to the Petsamo nickel mines (see my 458, March 9, 4 p.m.) the Minister said agreement had been reached between the Finnish and Soviet Governments with respect to all of the questions in issue except the Soviet demand for the appointment of the managing director of the company and 20 percent of the supervising engineers, who are approximately 50 in number.
The Finnish counterproposal offers to appoint only two Soviet citizens as supervising engineers. The Minister expects the negotiations to continue and believes that an agreement will eventually be arrived at.
Paasikivi stated that Finland is endeavoring to maintain its position of neutrality and remarked in this connection that the Soviet report (see my 850 [880,] April 30, noon) that 12,000 German troops had arrived in Finland was a gross exaggeration. He said that there [Page 30] had been only 1,400 troops and that they were all men who had previously been stationed in northern Norway who had returned from home leave via Finland and had proceeded at once to Norway using their own trucks and gasoline from the Finnish railhead. He admitted however the steadily increasing number of German civilians had entered Finland during recent months but said that this influx had been occasioned by the fact that more than 50 percent of Finland’s trade is now with Germany as commerce with other countries has been shut off.
He added that the failure of Sweden to increase its purchases in Finland and the refusal of the Soviet Union to buy cellulose, paper and timber had compelled Finland to look to Germany for an export market and that in consequence the Finnish Government could not very well refuse visas to the large number of Germans who have been arriving in Finland. He also pointed out that Finnish-German cultural relations go back over 150 years and give the Germans an excuse for sending additional numbers of their citizens into Finland.
As to Finnish-Soviet relations the Minister said they are “correct”. He does not believe that the Soviets contemplate seizing Finland at this time or entering into a deal with Germany involving Finland but considers it more likely that Hitler has offered or will offer Stalin the Dardanelles and the Turkish and Iranian areas near Batum and Baku as well as access to the Persian Gulf in return for increased Soviet economic and other assistance. He expressed the opinion that the Soviet Union will become more and more of a silent partner in Hitler’s ventures and that if Hitler appears conclusively to be winning the war Stalin will throw in his lot with him completely in fact if not by written agreement.
The Minister said that in his “not less than 50 conferences” with Stalin and Molotov he had learned that prestige meant more to them than anything else; that their invariable policy was to obtain what they could for as little as possible and then ask for more; that they never sacrificed immediate gains for considerations of the future; that they paid no attention to what was said, but only to what was done; that they endeavored to be paid a high price for what they realized they must do anyway; and that they were impervious to ethical or humanitarian factors or those of abstract justice, being influenced exclusively by practical and realistic considerations.