The Rescue plan
Here I will not delve into the war itself or into the political
developments during it, but with one exception, the controversial plan
by Britain and France to assist Finland by sending troops there.
Already in December 1939 those two powers had asked the Finnish
government if it was willing to accept direct military aid in the form
of troops. These would be transported by ship to Narvik in Norway and
then by train though Sweden to Finland. The size of this “rescue
expedition” was initially vaguely set to “two or three brigades”
(10 000-15 000 men) but later it shrank to a number of reinforced
battalions (say 3000 men). The Finnish leadership had grave doubts about
the viability of whole plan. Of course all help was in principle welcome
but this plan posed great dangers too. By accepting help from Britain
one would concede that Stalin’s suspicions about an attack from that
country through Finland on Russia were after all well founded. If then
the aid was not large enough to decisively affect the outcome of the war
Finland’s position at the peace negotiations that anyway had to follow
sooner or later would be much degraded. And there was no indication that
the allied expeditionary force would be large enough, nor was there any
guarantee that they would support it well enough.
The allied powers had early on contacted the governments of Norway and
Sweden to get their acceptance of the planned transition of troops
through these neutral countries. These countries viewed the plan with
horror. Not only did they see the plan as providing too little and too
late for Finland but, rightly, suspected that the real intention with
the plan was to occupy ports on the Norwegian coastline, Narvik in
particular, and of getting control of the mines at Kiruna and so deny
Germany access to high-grade Swedish iron-ore. They categorically denied
transit. For this the Swedish war-time government has been heavily criticized, in particular of course by people that have never heard
about, or chosen to ignore, the true intentions of the allies. In
Finland too, one can now and then hear or read opinions like “Sweden
betrayed us by not allowing the allies to come to our help”.
But this whole plan was hopelessly faulty from birth and would have
caused nothing but trouble for those involved if ever implemented. It
was a military plan visualized by politicians with total disregard to
military realities. As a military operation the plan was a first class
monstrosity without any true chance of success. The initial troops could
probably have been successfully transported to Narvik, unloaded there
and then taken by train through Sweden to the Finnish border at
Haparanda/Tornio and then further south to where the fighting was going
on. But did the politicians dreaming up the plan realize the logistic
problems involved? The troops needed different ammunition than available
in Finland, were used to different food, had different vehicles and
different radios, in short needed to get 100% of their supplies and
replacements/reinforcements supplied from their own countries.
Not only the initial deployment but all subsequent logistic support had
to be done through ONE harbour and then on mostly ONE single railroad
through areas with multiple river crossings. On the Swedish/Finnish
border everything had to be unloaded and then reloaded onto another
train as the Swedish and Finnish railroad systems had different gauge
tracks. And all this under potential Russian air superiority! (Make no
mistake here, the performance of the Russian Air Force during the Winter
War was rather mediocre but there were a lot more and better equipped
resources available that would certainly have been thrown into the fight
if Britain and France had become involved.)
And then think about how happy Norway and Sweden would have been to have
Russian aircraft attacking their trains and bridges on their territories
because they were carrying British and French troops. Furthermore there
was a high risk that Germany would intervene in order to protect its
interests in Scandinavia. And Sweden and Norway were countries that did
their best to stay out of the war!
And finally: If the Soviet Union on one hand and Britain and France on
the other hand had found themselves at war the big winner would have
been Hitler! What better could he wish for than to have his to main
enemies start fighting each one other?
So this plan should be stowed away somewhere in a dark corner of the
large cupboard containing history’s all misconceived, politician
inspired proposals for military actions that had minimal chances of
success but instead major potential for catastrophic consequences for
those involved.
But as a final ironic twist of history we will see that maybe this
witless plan nevertheless had a major and positive influence on
Finland’s fate. “There is never anything bad that doesn’t bring
something good with it” seems to apply here too!
Final note.
Even after the rejection by Norway and Sweden the plan continued, with a
life of its own. At one stage it reached the size of a 150 000 man
expeditionary force with aircraft carriers providing air cover and the
whole initial transfer of troops planned to take 11 weeks with 36
destroyers providing close cover! At least the French plans included an
additional southern arm, attacking Russia through the Black Sea. The
plan now clearly had grown to something quite different than an
expedition to support Finland and so no longer belongs in this story
Additional Note: How
did the Swedish Voluntary Corps manage their logistics? Didn't they face
the same problems?
They
had two big advantages over the planned allied force:
-Their logistics home-base was Sweden so they could altogether avoid the
Narvik-Kiruna-Boden railroad which was the most vulnerable link in the
whole foreseen transportation chain.
-Their logistics chain was much shorter and didn't involve any sea
transportation.
Furthermore they enjoyed the advantage of not facing any large-scale
Russian counter-moves, like bombing of the Swedish rail network. A
benefit the allied force would hardly have got!
On the Finnish side the Swedes were used in the Salla sector in the
north which meant that their main logistics artery was the SW-NE
Tornio-Rovaniemi-Kemijärvi railroad which could get air protection from
the Swedish Voluntary Air Unit.