Foreign support of Finland in the Winter War
Finnish immigrants in the United States and Canada returned home, and many volunteers (one of them future actor Christopher Lee) traveled to Finland to join Finland's forces: 8,700 Swedes, 1,010 Danes (including Christian Frederik von Schalburg, a captain in the Danish Royal Life Guards and later commander of the Free Corps Denmark, a volunteer unit created by Nazi Germany in Denmark during World War II), about 1,000 Estonians, 725 Norwegians, 372 Ingrians, 366 Hungarians,[1] 346 Finnish expatriates, 4 Latvians, 2 Lithuanians and 190 volunteers of other nationalities made it to Finland before the war was over.
Pope Pius XII condemned the Soviet attack on 26 December 1939 in a speech at the Vatican and later donated a signed and sealed prayer on behalf of Finland.
[2] Estonia remained officially neutral, but 400–1000 Estonian individuals travelled clandestinely to Finland and volunteered to fight against the Soviet invaders.
Italy violated the pact for the second time by promptly responding to requests by the Republic of Finland for military assistance and equipment for use against the Soviet government.
[7] The Norwegian government prohibited officers or under-officers to volunteer for the war in Finland out of fear that this would aggravate the Germans (they wanted to remain neutral at all costs).
Of the 725 Norwegians that volunteered to fight for Finland, only 125 made it to the relatively tranquil Salla front and then just three weeks before the war ended.
The most highly decorated Norwegian in the later resistance movement, Gunnar Sønsteby, spent his stay as an office clerk (like many of his countrymen in the Winter War).
In addition to the military volunteers, 30 physicians and 40 nurses went to help the Finnish medical system, under the auspices of the Norwegian People's Aid.
[16] The Norwegian government secretly donated to the Finns 12 German-made 7.5 cm field gun m/01s[17] (designated 75 K 01 in Finnish service) in February 1940.
They explicitly threatened to fire upon any ship that came near Trondheim or Narvik on that mission, as it was correctly assumed that such a force would in reality be used to occupy those towns.
[25] Finnish soldiers of the independent Lapland Group that retreated across the border into Finnmark were transported south and interned at Hegra Fortress in the Nord-Trøndelag county of Central Norway.
[26] As the Finns had retreated in the northern areas, they had carried out a scorched earth policy, destroying all housing and infrastructure to impede the Soviet advance.
The Swedish Army, which had been downsizing its armed forces since the 1920s, transferred approximately 1/3 of its equipment to Finland, among them 135,000 rifles and 330 guns and large quantities of ammunition.
Together with three remaining Finnish battalions, the corps faced two Soviet divisions and were preparing for an attack by mid-March but were inhibited by the peace agreement.
The domestic debate in Finland had in the years immediately before the war given common Finns hope of considerably more support from Sweden, such as a large force of regular troops, that could have had a significant impact on the outcome of the war—or possibly caused the Soviets not to attack at all.
From the Swedish government’s perspective, the voluntary bataillons represented a convenient measure, not only to „canalize“ so-called „activist“ forces within the population, but also to deflect criticism that Sweden was not doing anything to help their neighbouring country.
[30] Many Swedish government officials, however, feared that, within the dynamics of the war, the voluntary movement could evolve into a regular military intervention, thereby inevitably dragging Sweden into the conflict.
Defense Minister Per Edvin Sköld e.g. ruled out that Sweden would train or equip the volunteers, fearing that this step could be perceived as co-belligerent by the Soviets.
In the United Kingdom, the "Finland Aid Bureau" and the politician Leo Amery sought to raise a contingent of volunteers to fight on the Finnish side despite the fact that the country was already at war with Germany at the time.
At the time deliveries were halted, ten aircraft were in containers at Le Havre waiting to be lifted to the ships and three more were on their way from Paris.
Within a month, the Soviet leadership began to consider abandoning the operation, and on 29 January 1940, via intermediaries in Sweden, Finland's government was approached on the subject of preliminary peace negotiations.
Although already at war with Nazi Germany, Britain and France put together a combined force of 100 000 troops and 62 bomber aircraft to go to Finland's aid.
[35][36] Soviet propaganda also claimed that after the Winter War, sanctions were imposed on frozen funds, which were then lifted later, due to Germany's invasion of the USSR on June 22, 1941.
[37]: 4 Following the outbreak of World War II, Uruguayan President Alfredo Baldomir Ferrari declared the country's neutrality.
[40] On the other hand, the La Mañana and El Diario newspapers collected money with which they bought and sent to the front 10,563 350-gram cans of corned beef manufactured by Frigorífico Anglo del Uruguay.
Each can had a legend in Finnish: "Uruguayn kansa Suomen sankarilliselle armeijalle", translated into English as: "from the Uruguayan people to the heroic army of Finland".
