740.0011 European War 1939/15645: Telegram
The Minister in Finland (Schoenfeld) to the Secretary of State
[Received 11 a.m.]
479. My telegram No. 450, September 25, 2 p.m. Late last night I received from the Foreign Office copy of Finnish Government’s aide-mémoire dated October 6 which, according to authorized statement in [Page 78] local press this morning, was handed yesterday to Swedish Minister here50 for transmission to British Government and will be published as soon as it reaches its destination. I also received copy of Finnish answer to Norwegian Government’s representation of September 22 which is likewise dated October 6.51 Text of answer to British Government is in English language and reads as follows:
“On behalf of the Government of Great Britain an aide-mémoire was handed to the Finnish Minister of Foreign Affairs on September 22 through the Norwegian Minister in Helsinki with reference to which the Finnish Government wishes to draw attention to the following circumstances.
On November 30, 1939 the Soviet Union attacked Finland without cause and without provocation.52 On December 14 the League of Nations accordingly, Great Britain being a party to the decision, in conformity with Article 16 of the League Covenant53 proclaimed the Soviet Union an aggressor and expelled her from membership in the League of Nations.54 Finland was left to carry on the war alone, and the question was never raised of any method by which the aggressor was to make good the consequences of his aggression.
On March 12, 1940 Finland was compelled to conclude the dictated peace of Moscow with the Soviet Union. In this connection Finland could not avoid ceding certain vital parts of her state territory to the aggressor, partly by a shifting of the frontiers, partly on the terms of a lease, in addition to which she had to consent to constructing for the benefit of the aggressor a strategic railway that constituted a threat to the security of Finland and the entire North.
Soon after the conclusion of peace a ruthless policy of extortion towards Finland, together with interference in and penetration into Finnish political life from within, was inaugurated by the Soviet Union. By these activities, an account of which is given in Documents Concerning Finno-Soviet Relations 2 (Finnish Blue-White Book 2) published by the Finnish Government,55 the Soviet Union aimed at the same ultimate result, the annihilation of Finland, as by the armed aggression a little earlier.
On June 22, 1941 the armed forces of the Soviet Union again embarked on hostilities against Finland which included the bombing from the air of Finnish warships and a Finnish fort. The following day it was announced in the leading Moscow newspaper Pravda that ‘the Finns were to be exterminated off the surface of the earth’. On June 25 hostilities by the Soviet Union developed into a systematic extensive attack directed at tens of thousands of Finnish targets. Finding herself again the object of armed aggression Finland did not, [Page 79] however, resort to active defensive measures until the beginning of July.
Finland’s struggle against this attack, which began on November 30, 1939 and has continued in different forms without a break since then, has been and is self-defense.
Important areas within the 1939 frontiers are still in the hands of the enemy, and these, in common with the areas beyond the said frontiers into which Finnish troops have advanced in the course of the fighting, have been utilized as bases for the attack on Finland. The Soviet Union has equipped these areas in the completest manner possible for attacks westward. It has now been possible to establish this ipso loco. The branch lines from the Murmansk Railway leading in the direction of the Finnish frontier, of which five have been discovered up to the present, the plans of the new highways constructed in the Carelian wilds solely for offensive purposes, and the numerous air fields, reveal beyond any doubt the aggressive plans of the Soviet Union and the untenable strategic position in which Finland had been placed by these preparations. An effective defense, Finland’s right to which none can deny, is possible to Finland only by transferring her defense into these very areas.
Moreover, the said areas beyond the old eastern frontier are not ‘purely Russian’, for their population is primarily Finnish. According to the latest available Soviet statistics, of the year 1930, the population of the areas beyond the 1939 frontiers intended by the British aide-mémoire, was between 93.4 and 99.2 percent, of Finnish nationality. The districts in question belong to those areas to whose Finnish population the Soviet Government promised in connection with the Treaty of Tartu in 192056 to guarantee very extensive rights of self-determination, promises which she later failed to honor.
Finland wages her defensive war free from all political obligations, but grateful that she need not this time fight alone. Finland cannot understand how Great Britain, with whom Finland has wished and wishes to retain peaceful relations, could regard herself, merely because Finland is not on this occasion alone in fighting the Soviet Union as entitled, nay, forced to treat Finland as an open enemy.”
Repeated to London.
- Stig E. G. Sahlin.↩
- Neither printed.↩
- For correspondence regarding the demands made upon Finland by the Soviet Union and the outbreak of the Winter War, see Foreign Relations, 1939, vol. i, pp. 952 ff.↩
- Foreign Relations, The Paris Peace Conference, 1919, vol. xiii, pp. 69, 88.↩
- See telegram No. 324, December 14, 1939, from the Consul General at Geneva, Foreign Relations, The Soviet Union, 1933–1939, p. 804.↩
- English language edition, Finland Reveals Her Secret Documents on Soviet Policy, March 1940–June 1941 (New York, 1941).↩
- Treaty of Peace between the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic and Finland, signed at Dorpat (Tartu, Yuryev) on October 14, 1920; for text, see League of Nations Treaty Series, vol. iii, p. 6.↩