On December 6, 2024 Lavrov said during his interview with Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host, in Moscow:
“Look, we have been very friendly with Finland, for example. Overnight, the Finns came back to the early years of preparation for World War II, when they were the best allies of Hitler. And all this neutrality, all this friendship, going to sauna together, playing hockey together, all this disappeared overnight.”
It was a long interview and covered a lot of ground. Still, I want to focus on just this one detail, which was conspicuous to me as a Finn, because it opens a much broader issue. Namely, who was (were) the best ally of the Nazi Germany that enabled its Blitzkrieg conquest of Europe in the early years of WW-II? One answer I can give immediately: it wasn’t Italy. Italy was an ally, all right, but a burden, not an enabler.
I take you chronologically through the events to answer Lavrov’s reference to Finns as “the best allies of Hitler”, but most of the paragraphs that follow cover wider European events from 1938 to 1941.
I begin with the governments of Finland re. the Soviet-Finnish relations before WWII
On March 21, 1931: Finland elected an old law-and-order conservative president, P.E. Svinhufvud, and after the parliamentary elections of 1932, he nominated the government of T. Kivimäki (1932‒36) that included the centrist Agrarian, the Liberal and the Swedish parties. This government negotiated and signed the first Soviet-Finnish Non-Aggression Pact on January 22, 1932 in Helsinki. Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania negotiated and signed similar Pacts with the Soviet Union.
On January 30, 1933: Adolf Hitler became the Chancellor of Germany, and on July 14, 1933 all political parties except the Nazi party were banned.
In the spring of 1934, the Soviet Union proposed to extend its bilateral Non-Aggression Pacts by 10 years. On April 7, 1934 Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Finland signed in Moscow the extended Non-Aggression Pacts with the Soviet Union to last until December 31, 1945.
On October 7, 1936, following the parliamentary elections, the president nominated K. Kallio (Agrarian party) to form a minority government (1936‒37) that included the Agrarian and Liberal parties. After K. Kallio was himself elected the new President on March 1. 1937, he nominated a government (1937‒39) of A.K. Cajander, a Liberal forestry professor, which leant on a uniquely strong parliamentary majority of the Social Democrats (83/200), the Agrarian (53/200), the Liberal (7/200) and the Swedish (21/200) parties, and ruled Finland until the Winter War.
Through the 1930’s, the Parliament also included a Conservative party (18..25/200), and national populist IKL party (8..14/200), which remained small and weak through the decade. Neither of these parties were represented in the Governments of the 1930’s in Finland.
Could you imagine a logical connection between this prewar history timeline of Finland’s presidents, governments and Non-Aggression Pacts with the Soviet Union through the 1930’s, and Sergei Lavrov’s statement “the Finns came back to the early years of preparation for World War II when they were the best allies of Hitler”?
I now move from the pre-WWII years to the two first years of WWII
On August 19, 1939, the Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed a 200 million Reichsmarks German-Soviet Credit Agreement to deliver commodities, such as oil, raw materials and grain to the value of 420‒430 million Reichsmarks to Germany (4 bn € in 2024).
On August 23, 1939, the foreign ministers Molotov (Soviet Union) and Ribbentrop (Nazi Germany) signed in Moscow the 10-year Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, officially the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. A secret protocol of the Pact divided Eastern Europe into the German (the Western half of Poland), and the Soviet (the Eastern half of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland) spheres of influence.
On September 1, 1939, the Nazi Germany invaded Poland from the West and South (Slovakia).
On September 17, 1939, Tte Soviet Union invaded Poland from the East, and by October 6, 1939, all of Poland had been taken and divided between the German and the Soviet armies as agreed in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The German and Soviet cooperation in the invasion of Poland has been described as co-belligerence.
On September 24, 1939, Estonia received an ultimatum to establish Soviet military bases in Estonia. Estonia signed the agreement on September 28, 1939, Latvia followed on October 5, 1939 and Lithuania on October 10, 1939. Consequently 21,000 Soviet soldiers were stationed in Estonia, 30,000 in Latvia, and 20,000 in Lithuania.
The Soviet-Finnish Winter War 0f 1939‒40
On October 5, 1939 the Soviets invited a Finnish delegation to Moscow for negotiations, which began on October 12. Molotov proposed an exchange of territories. The Soviet Union wanted most of the Karelian Isthmus between Viipuri and Leningrad, the Gulf Islands, the Finnish Peninsula of Kalastajasaarento between the Soviet Union and Norway on the coast of the Arctic Ocean, and the Hanko Peninsula about 100 km West of Helsinki (both critically important harbours), and offered land further in the North in exchange. The Finnish side made counteroffers, and the negotiations in Moscow continued on/off without resolution until on November 13, when they ended in failure.
On November 30, 1939 – two days after the Soviet Union revoked the Soviet-Finnish Non-Aggression Pact of 1934 – the Winter War began, by the Soviet air force aerial bombardment of Helsinki and some other cities and industrial sites in Finland, and following heavy artillery fire, the Soviet soldiers and tanks invaded Finland at numerous locations on the Eastern border. The Soviet forces expected a welcoming reception by the Finnish working class, and to reach Helsinki in the South and Oulu in the North within a few weeks. They were thus poorly prepared for a longer war, for fighting in deep snow, dense forests with few or no roads, and the oncoming very cold (down to -45°F) winter. Finland received extensive material and military help from Sweden (which officially remained neutral!), including 10 000 volunteer soldiers with personal weapons and supplies, 13 tanks and 26 aircraft. Considerable economic and material help was also received from the US, Great Britain, France, Denmark and Italy. The Nazi Germany, in contrast, remained true to its Pact with the Soviet Union, not only preventing any help coming from Germany but also blocking any transfer of materials via German soil. The Great Britain and France also planned a military expedition to Northern Norway (which took place on April 1940) and further to Finland.
On March 1940, the Finnish army was still fighting, but very low on supplies and on the brink of collapse. At the same time, however, Stalin absolutely wanted to avoid any military conflict with the Great Britain. Thereby, after 3.5 months of fighting, the Moscow Peace Treaty ended the Winter War on March 13, 1940. The Soviet Union gained all the original territorial demands, but not Stalin’s political demands. He had to abandon the O.W. Kuusinen’s puppet government that he had nominated for Finland on December, 1939, and except the Hanko Peninsula, he gained no Soviet army presence or political control of Finland.
The casualties had been heavy on both sides: 70,000 dead, missing or wounded in Finland, 321,000 – 381,000 in the Soviet Union.
On February 11, 1940, the Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed an extension of the German-Soviet Commercial Agreement [A. B.] for 27 months.
Between January 1940 and the date of the German Barbarossa invasion that broke and ended the agreement, the USSR exported goods to the total estimated value of 597.9 million Reichsmarks (5.5 bn € in 2024) to Germany. German deliveries amounted to 437.1 million Reichsmarks (4 bn € in 2024). The agreements resulted in the delivery of large amounts of raw materials to Germany, including over 820,000 tons of oil, 1,500,000 tons of grain and 130,000 tons of manganese ore.
The Soviet Union received the incomplete Admiral Hipper-class naval cruiser Lützow, the plans to the battleship Bismarck, information on German naval testing, ”complete machinery for a large destroyer”, heavy naval guns, other naval gear, and samples of 30 of Germany’s latest warplanes, including the Bf 109 and 110 fighters and Ju 88 and Do 215 bombers. The Soviet Union also received electric equipment, locomotives, turbines, generators, diesel engines, ships, machine-tools, and samples of German artillery, tanks, explosives, chemical-warfare equipment, and other items.
Raw materials that Germany had obtained from the Soviets through the 1940 agreement supported the German war effort against the Soviet Union from 1941 onwards. In particular, the German stocks of rubber and grain would not have sufficed to support the invasion of the Soviet Union if the Soviets had not already supplied these products to Germany.
The Eastern flank of the Nazi Germany was now secured by the pre-war annexation of Austria on March 13, 1938, the occupation of Czechoslovakia (in steps from October 1, 1938 to March 15, 1939), the annexation of Western Poland on October 6, 1939 and the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of August 23, 1939. These together enabled…
…the North-, West-, and Southward Blitzkrieg conquests of the Nazi German forces in 1940 and 1941
On April 9 – June 9, 1940, the Nazi Germany conquered Denmark and Norway.
On May 10 – June 21, 1940, the Nazi Germany conquered Belgium, the Netherlands, and France.
For fifteen months after the Winter War Finland remained – despite the Moscow Peace Treaty – under constant diplomatic, political, and military pressure from the Soviet Union. One well-known atrocity was the shooting down of a Finnish commercial aircraft, Kaleva, on its scheduled flight on June 14, 1940, for the purpose of capturing a bag of the diplomatic mail it was known to carry.
On August 3, 1940, Lithuania was annexed into the Soviet Union, on August 5. 1940 Latvia, and on August 6, 1940 Estonia.
From July 10 to October 31, 1940 the Nazi Germany tried to force Britain into a peace treaty – the Battle of Britain. First the air and sea blockade were begun, targeting shipping convoys, ports and shipping centres. On August 1, 1940, the German Luftwaffe was directed to achieve air superiority over the British RAF by attacking the airfields, aircraft production and strategic infrastructure. Eventually the campaign employed terror bombing of cities and civilian populations ä.
From September 7, 1940 to May 11, 1941 the Luftwaffe carried large scale nocturnal terror attacks on England, known as the Blitz.
In the closing months of 1940, in accordance with the Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement, the ethnic Germans were transferred from Estonia and Latvia, and in 1941 from Lithuania, to be resettled in West Prussia in Germany.
The new German-Soviet Border and Commencial Agreement that was signed on January 10, 1941, was a broad agreement that settled border disputes, and ensured the ongoing raw materials and war machine trade between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.
On April 6 – 27, 1941, the Nazi Germany conquered Yugoslavia and Greece.
Summary of the Nazi German – Soviet cooperation until June 1941
The political, commercial and military alliance based on the German-Soviet Commercial Agreements of August 19. 1939, February 11. 1940, and January 10. 1941, and the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and its secret protocol of August 23. 1939, remained effective from August 19, 1939 until June 22, 1941, i.e., through the first 20 of the 68 months that the WWII raged in Europe.
From the German-Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, through the Soviet invasion of the Baltic states and Finland later in 1939-1940, the Nazi German invasions of Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Yugoslavia and Greece, and the Battle of Britain in 1940 – 41, the best, i.e., the most valuable ally of the Nazi Germany beyond any question was the Soviet Union. On the one hand the German-Soviet Commercial agreements supplied the Nazi Germany with huge quantities of food and critical raw materials, and on the other hand, the Non-Aggression Treaty secured its Eastern flank while Nazi Germany was conquering most of the North, West and South of Europe. In June 1941 the Great Britain was standing alone against the Nazi-German ruled Europe.
WW-II, of course, did not end there. It continued for four more years. But the war took a completely new course. The alliance between the Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union ended, a new alliance between the Great Britain and the Soviet Union was agreed, and when the United States and China entered into it half a year later the Allied Powers was formed.
In wanted to focus in this blog-post on the two first years of WW-II, that was launched and then defined by the German-Soviet alliance, and have been forgotten by the Russians, like Sergei Lavrov, because alliance with the Nazis doesn’t support their national pride.
To make the timeline complete, however, I will now fast forward towards then V-day on May 1945.
On June 22, 1941, the Nazi Germany turned Eastwards and invaded the Soviet Union, while freight trains were still delivering commodities from Russia to Germany.
The German invasion of the Soviet Union, and only this, finally ended the political, commercial and military alliance between the two dictators. Only the end of the two year Nazi German-Soviet alliance made the emergence of a Nazi German-Finnish alliance possible.
On June 25, 1941, Finland declared the Second Soviet-Finnish War on the Soviet Union, and on July 10, 1941, the Finnish Armed Forces invaded the territory taken by the Soviets in the Winter War Peace Treaty, and then further areas North and East of Lake Ladoga that had never before been a part of Finland.
The Finnish-German Waffenbruderschaft was certainly a de facto military alliance, but an eternal debate has been going on about whether it was also a de jure military alliance. Finland refused to join the Tripartite Pact of 1940 (The Nazi Germany led Military Alliance consisting of Germany, Italy, and Japan – called the Axis Powers – that later expanded to include also Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Croatia), but in the end of 1941 Finland did join the 13-country Anti-Comintern Pact of 1936 that was directed against communism.
The long and bloody final years of WW-II till the Nazi German defeat, 1942-45, [C, D, E, F ]
The surprise attack of the Japanese Navy on the U.S. Navy Base in Pearl Harbour, Hawaii on December 7, 1941 brought the US first into the Pacific and then also into the European Theatre of WW-II. On November 8, 1942 the US forces landed in and invaded the French colonies of Morrocco and Algeria, on July 1943 they invaded Sicily, and on September 1943 the Southern Italy. On June 6, 1944 the Allied forces landed in and invaded Normandy.
On June 9, 1944, coinciding with the Allied forces Operation Overlord in Normandy, the Soviet Leningrad Front launched the heaviest offensive yet on the Finnish defences in the Karelian Isthmus. To receive desperately needed material help and air power from the Nazi Germany R. Ryti, signed a Ryti-Ribbentrop letter of Agreement, a personal commitment as the President of Finland to stay at the side of the Nazi Germany till the end of the war. The Finnish Army succeeded to stop the Soviet offensive after very severe losses on both sides. The Soviets withdrew most of their forces from the Finnish Front and directed them southwards to reach Berlin before the Americans and the British. As the Finnish Front calmed down, R. Ryti resigned as President and was replaced by C.G. Mannerheim, the secret peace talks were begun, and the hostilities between Finland and the Soviet Union were ended by the Moscow Armistice on September 19, 1944.
The war in Europe continued, however. The Soviet Union paid a horrendous price for its trust on the military, political and economic agreements with the Nazi Germany. But also the Germans suffered 3/4 of their 5.5 million war deaths in the Eastern Front. The defeat of Nazi Germany began by the surrender of the remains of the German Forces in Stalingrad on January 31, 1943. The Nazi-German Army never recovered from this. This was also the point where the Finnish Army Command and Government concluded that the defeat and eventual surrender of Nazi-Germany are inevitable and, to avoid disaster,e Finland must make peace with the Soviet Union as soon as possible. One year later the Soviet Forces ended the Siege of Leningrad on January 27, 1944. Battle by battle the German forces were pushed westwards out of the Soviet territory by September 1944, out of the Balkans and into the German Motherland in East Prussia by December 1944. The Battle of Berlin raged from April 20 to May 2 1945.
On May 9, 1945 the Nazi Germany capitulated, and the WW-II in Europe was over.
Together the estimated loss of life in the 1941-45 war between the Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union is over 30 million, making it the bloodiest front in any war, ever.
Epilogue
In the alternative reality that the Great Britain had not won the 1940-41 Battle of Britain, the US would hardly have entered the war in Europe, a war between the Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union would most likely have broken out eventually, the liberal democracy as a form of government and society would hardly exist anywhere in Europe, and that Europe would be incomprehensible for anyone dropped into it from the Europe that we now know.