Churchill and Finland: A Study in Anti-Communism and Geopolitics by Markku Ruotsila, and: The Foreign Office and Finland 1938–1940: Diplomatic Sideshow by Craig Gerrard (review)

In a world driven by the interests of great powers, scholars until recently tended to overlook the role of small countries in shaping the contours of the international system. However, studies of small countries are by no means inconsequential. Not only do they refine our appreciation of micropolitics, of actors and arenas, but they remind us of the way small countries are sometimes able to gain overwhelming significance in the calculations of great powers and so exert a disproportionate influence on macro processes. They also remind us that great powers often play complex geopolitical games that involve a fair degree of duplicity in their dealings with smaller countries. This is particularly true of Finland’s relations with Great Britain in the first part of the twentieth century, when both the threat of Bolshevism and rivalry with Germany elevated this remote northeastern corner of Europe to that of a crucial theater for British interests.

Two monographs on this subject do justice to the complexities of this relationship over two different periods. Finnish scholar Markku Ruotsila presents a broad analysis of Winston Churchill’s “Finland connection” (1900–1955), whereas British scholar Craig Gerrard offers a focused account of the British Foreign Office’s Northern Department in the opening moves of WWII (1938–1940). Ruotsila’s study is diachronic, detailing Churchill’s relationship with Finland within the context of his personal ideology of anti-Communism, an ideology that developed over time but that also framed his calculations regarding this Nordic state. Gerrard’s study is a synchronic snapshot of the officials who coordinated Britain’s policy in northern Europe at the very moment the region occupied central significance in efforts to curtail the threat of the USSR and Germany.

The more or less consistent British line, shared by Churchill and the Foreign Office, was that the Finns needed to be “managed” and kept away from Germany while preventing any antagonism between Helsinki and Moscow. This pragmatism is best seen in Gerrard’s account of British reactions to Finnish plans for fortification of the Åland Islands in 1938 amid rising tensions in the region. These islands, strategically located in the Gulf of Bothnia between Finland and Sweden, were subject to complex calculations by the British regarding the benefits of fortification from their own impending conflict with Germany. In the eventuality of conflict between Germany and the USSR, Soviet occupation of these islands, the British calculated, could help sever German iron ore shipments from Sweden. However, any Soviet occupation of the Åland Islands could push Finland toward closer alliance with Germany—an eventuality that was not in British interests.

Thus, Finland was important, but only relative to its position in the larger game unfolding. Ultimately, as Gerrard notes, the Foreign Office’s Northern Department was sympathetic to Finland but was reluctantly willing to “compromise the wishes of the Finnish government” and instead place “British national interest above the integrity of a small state” (p. 82) in order to resolve issues with the Soviet Union concerning Finland and the Baltic states and to prevent what was the actual and worst-case scenario from developing—a Soviet-German pact.

Both authors skillfully outline curious subplots that played out in the different time frames of the two studies. None of these subplots is more intriguing than Churchill’s personal relationship with C. G. Mannerheim, the military leader and former president of Finland who had intermittent contact with Churchill during the interwar period. Although based on a shared anti-Communist vision, this fascinating relationship was by no means harmonious. The two men held crucially different opinions about global governance. Mannerheim, notably, was skeptical about the utility of the League of Nations in providing security to small countries. Mannerheim’s concern about effective institutions of global governance remains an important issue in Finnish...