Office of the Historian

740.00119 European War 1939/1380: Telegram

The Secretary of State to the Chargé in Finland (McClintock)

Washington, April 8, 1943—2 a.m.

55. Your 524, April 7, 5 p.m.49 Keep us closely informed of further developments. If you see no objection to such a procedure you are authorized to inform the Finnish Government that these reports have come to your attention and to ask for its comments thereon. If you are given to understand that the true situation is substantially as reported in your telegram under reference you are authorized to state that if the Finnish Government accepts any further German demands limiting its freedom of action, the Finnish Government must understand clearly the resulting consequences upon relations with the United States as a member of the United Nations dedicated as we are to the prosecution of the war to the final defeat of the Axis Powers and the countries associated with them.50

Hull
  1. This telegram, and also the Chargers telegram No. 530 of April 8, midnight (neither printed), summarized several incidents which indicated measures of German pressure on Finland, including the departures for Berlin of Finnish Foreign Minister Ramsay on March 25, after an “imperative summons”, and of the German Minister to Finland, without von Blücher, on April 5 or 6, and threats by Von Ribbentrop of German “military action” (740.00119 European War 1939/1380, 1385). Ramsay saw Von Ribbentrop on March 26, and was presented in unequivocal terms with Germany’s political demands on Finland: that the Finnish Government clearly reject the United States offer of good offices so as to end any possibility of a repetition of the American action, and that Finland give Germany a guarantee that no separate peace would be made by Finland without German agreement thereto. See accounts of these developments given in Without von Blücher, Gesandter zwischen Diktatur und Demokratie (Wiesbaden, 1951). pp. 330 ff., and in Wuorinen, Finland and World War II, 1939–1944, p. 153. See also the last paragraph of telegram No. 805, June 21, noon, from the Chargé in Finland, post, p. 281.↩
  2. The same day McClintock delivered a note to this effect to Foreign Minister Ramsay.↩