Office of the Historian

740.00119 European War 1939/1515: Telegram

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

Helsinki, June 20, 1943—11 a.m.
[Received 1:51 p.m.]

803. With reference to my 802, June 19,78 Erkko79 told me last April secret conversations had taken place in Sweden between Madame Kollontay80 and German Minister, Thomsen, who had with him two other Germans of high rank but whom Erkko could not identify. Soviet Minister was accompanied by a Counselor of Legation whose name as I recall it was Nikotin.81

According to my informant conversations lasted several days and began around April 18. Among topics discussed were establishment of an autonomous Ukrainian state as a buffer between Germany and U.S.S.R., the reaching of a separate peace between the two countries and disposition of Baltic States to Russia.

Erkko said he thought Allies had got wind of these talks and connected them with sudden flight of British Minister82 from Stockholm to London at about that time. At all events he said when Germans sought to continue conversations with Kollontay she blandly [Page 668] informed them they should read Stalin’s order of the day of May 183 in which he derided notion of a separate peace.

I have no means of checking truth of this story84 but Erkko quite sincerely believes it and I do not doubt he has communicated it to members of Finnish Government.

Repeated to Stockholm.

McClintock
  1. Not printed.↩
  2. Eljas Erkko, newspaper editor in Helsinki, and former Minister for Foreign Affairs.↩
  3. Alexandra Mikhailovna Kollontay, Soviet Minister in Sweden.↩
  4. Probably reference is to the commercial representative, Mikhail Artemyevich Nikitin.↩
  5. Victor A. L. Mallet.↩
  6. The essential passages were reported by the Ambassador in the Soviet Union in telegram No. 388, May 2, 11 a.m., p. 519.↩
  7. In telegram No. 690, June 18, midnight, Ambassador Standley had reported from Moscow a denial by the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (Tass) of reports from Sweden that German-Soviet peace negotiations had recently been held in Stockholm, which had been broken off “because of disagreement regarding territorial problems.” (740.00119 European War 1939/1514) Mr. Charles E. Bohlen of the Division of European Affairs wrote in a memorandum of June 24: “The Department has no evidence of any kind to lend to the conclusion that the Soviet Union will not remain an active member of the United Nations until the military defeat of Germany. However, it is too strong to state that the State Department is ‘convinced’ of this fact if only for the reason that a dictatorship responsive in the last analysis to the views of one man is of necessity unpredictable. There is nothing in the immediate objective circumstances which would make it to the advantage of the Soviet Government to conclude a separate peace with Germany.” (740.0011 EW 1939/29898½)↩