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Documents and Readings in the History of Europe Since 1918
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Historical SummaryThe official instructions sent from the German Foreign Office to German Missions abroad offer an interesting sidelight on the motives, calculations, and methods of Nazi diplomacy.
World History 255.
German Official "Line" on the Finnish-Soviet War4
Berlin, December 2, 1939.
In your conversations regarding the Finnish-Russian conflict please avoid any anti-Russian note.
According to whom you are addressing, the following arguments are to be employed: The inescapable course of events in the revision of the treaties following the last Great War. The natural requirement of Russia for increased security of Leningrad and the entrance to the Gulf of Finland. The foreign policy pursued by the Finnish Government has in the last few years stressed the idea of neutrality. It has relied on the Scandinavian states and has treated German-Russian opposition as axiomatic. As a result Finland has avoided any rapprochement with Germany and has even rejected the conclusion of a nonaggression pact with Germany as compromising, even though Finland has a nonaggression pact with Russia. Also in the League of Nations, Finland, in spite of the debt of gratitude which she owed to Germany for the latter’s help in 1918, has never come out for German interests. Foreign Minister Holsti is typical of this point of view and particularly hostile to Germany. Extensive elements in Finland emphasize their economic and ideological orientation in the direction of democratic England. Correspondingly the attitude of most of the organs of the press is outspokenly unfriendly to us. The platonic sympathy of England has confirmed Finland in her previous attitude and has done the country no good.
4 United States, Department of State (Publication No. 3023), Nazi-Soviet Relations 1939–1941. Documents from the Archives of the German Foreign Office, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1948, pp. 127–128.
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Chicago: "German Official Line on the Finnish-Soviet War," Documents and Readings in the History of Europe Since 1918 in Documents and Readings in the History of Europe Since 1918, ed. Walter Consuelo Langsam and James Michael Egan (Chicage: Lippincott, 1951), 865–866. Original Sources, accessed November 23, 2024, http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=4AGSFKBDVRTMW13.
MLA: . "German Official "Line" on the Finnish-Soviet War." Documents and Readings in the History of Europe Since 1918, in Documents and Readings in the History of Europe Since 1918, edited by Walter Consuelo Langsam and James Michael Egan, Chicage, Lippincott, 1951, pp. 865–866. Original Sources. 23 Nov. 2024. http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=4AGSFKBDVRTMW13.
Harvard: , 'German Official "Line" on the Finnish-Soviet War' in Documents and Readings in the History of Europe Since 1918. cited in 1951, Documents and Readings in the History of Europe Since 1918, ed. , Lippincott, Chicage, pp.865–866. Original Sources, retrieved 23 November 2024, from http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=4AGSFKBDVRTMW13.
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