740.0011 European War 1939/16078: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Minister in Finland (Schoenfeld)
220. Your 507, October 23,58 arrived most opportunely for since the return of the Harriman Mission59 we have knowledge of the extent to which Finnish military operations by their strong offensive character at points far beyond the Finnish frontiers are influencing the German-Russian campaign and thus as I stated to Procopé in my conversation of October 3 Finland can only be considered at this time as conducting a campaign directly against those policies to which the United States is committed. Your conversation with Ryti gives the first intimation that these operations may be discontinued and you may state to the Finnish Government that if this is not the case it is bound to influence the economic and even official relations of our two Governments both now and later.
Specifically, you are requested to inform at the earliest opportunity such members of the Finnish Government as you deem appropriate that if Finland desires to maintain our friendship now and later, satisfactory evidence must be given that it is the intention of the Finnish Government to discontinue immediately all offensive operations against Soviet territory and that to that end Finnish troops in principle will promptly be withdrawn.60 You should also state that should war material dispatched from this country via the Arctic Ocean to northern Soviet territory be attacked en route even allegedly or presumably from Finnish-controlled territory, such an incident in the present status of American opinion must be expected to create an immediate crisis in American-Finnish relations.
Furthermore, while we are not unmindful of the difficulties involved for Finland in taking advantage of such an opportunity, because of the threat to Finnish freedom of action arising from the presence in Finland of large numbers of German troops, we wish to remind the Finnish Government that on August 18 the Under Secretary told Procopé that we had been informed that should the Government of Finland be so disposed the Soviet Union was prepared to negotiate a new treaty of peace with Finland involving territorial concessions by [Page 82] the Soviet Union to Finland. The Minister raised certain obvious questions regarding guarantees, et cetera, in reply to which he was informed that in our opinion it was first necessary to determine what the attitude of Finland might be in regard to the possibilities which had been communicated to him and that consequently the questions which he had raised were ones which need only come up for discussion in the event his Government desired to explore these possibilities.
Not only have we never received any response from the Finnish Government as to its attitude toward this matter but also Procopé has not directly referred to it in his various subsequent conversations with officers of the Department. We learned, however, that not long after this matter was presented to Procopé, certain high Finnish officials and the press of Finland and Germany were emphasizing that Finland would not make peace with the present Government of the Soviet Union.
For your own background: It may well be that Procopé for reasons known to himself has never communicated to his Government the substance of this conversation of August 18 but we must hold the Finnish Government fully responsible for the acts of their Minister in this country as indeed in our future relations we must hold the Government of Finland responsible for the fact that no indication has been given that this possible method of settling by peaceful negotiations its just grievances against the Soviet Union has been explored, and consequently by its own choice the Finnish Government has been associating itself with a policy of world aggression in a manner and to an extent entirely contrary to the American concept of legitimate self-defense.
- Not printed.↩
- W. Averell Harriman, Special Representative of President Roosevelt, and Chairman of the Special Mission to the Soviet Union, with a British counterpart led by Lord Beaverbrook, held conferences in Moscow between September 29 and October 1, 1941. For correspondence concerning this mission, see pp. 825–852, passim.↩
- Through an error in the code room, at this point the following words, although crossed out on the original copy of the telegram, were transmitted: “from Soviet territory to a line corresponding to the 1939 Soviet-Finnish frontier.” Because this “definition of the line to which Finnish troops should be withdrawn obviously goes much farther than the Department intended” its omission had been in fact indicated.↩