The war which will not stay hidden

Carl Gust. Mannerheim is leaving the President's Residence. 

When Britain declared war on Finland in December 1941, perhaps both sides understood where their true sympathies lay, by some wartime´s letters which have been found.

There are according to Financial Times among our papers, a record, unpublished, of a small secret intelligence mission led by George Bruce, Lord Balfour of Burleigh, that flew from London to Helsinki in April 1940. Straying over Sweden, it was nearly shot down,
but that is another story, adds FT.

Part of BofB’s brief was to meet Field Marshal Carl Gustaf Mannerheim and Finland’s president, Risto Ryti, to apologise for Britain’s dilatoriness in assisting Finland when it had been invaded by the Soviet Union, allied with Germany, in November 1939. British military support, sent in February 1940, had come too late. The Finns were realistic. Ryti told BofB, in a private conversation on May 4 1940, that

right from the start he had never allowed himself to hope that the Allies would be in time to save Finland. He knew that our leaders were old men who needed time to take decisions.

In a number of conversations with Mannerheim and with Ryti, BofB heard what Finland needed now: protection of shipping lanes, for example, so that pulp, paper, minerals etc could be exported, to earn foreign currency to pay for imports of food, lorries and petrol. Covert assistance was also agreed.

On May 10, while still in Helsinki, BofB heard that Nazi-Germany had invaded Holland, Luxembourg and Belgium. The RAF was unable to send a plane to bring him home but he and his secret papers were eventually smuggled out by ship from the far north of Norway.

The Finns had resisted the Soviet Union to their utmost but they recognised that Britain would now be able to do little to help them.

Even so, BofB reported to Winston Churchill and Halifax, his conversations with the Field Marshal and Ryti had confirmed that the Finns were

fully aware of the importance to them and their whole future existence of an Allied victory.

And `only realpolitik´ forced the hands of both Finland and Britain in December 1941.
The real reason for the declaration of war was that: Finland rejected the peace offer, by the Allies, in August `40, and chose the Nazis.
This also created a risk for our neighborly.