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Eight: The Last Summer in Kultaranta
Eight: The Last Summer in Kultaranta
In just one night
The forest behind the lake
Flashed into yellow fire
Now the evening star's fiery sword
Cuts and slashes the dark waters
My heart shudders
And reaches out for a summer
One never to return
Mika Waltari: Tuuli pohjoinen – Runoja (”A Northern Wind – Poems”), 1965.
That President Kallio had health problems was not news to the Finnish people. The president had suffered a stroke in January 1939, and only in early July had the president's office given out a statement that Kallio had not yet fully recovered from the ordeal. All through the summer, Kallio's health was closely monitored by his private physician. The president had spent much of the summer convalescing in Mänttä, and had only in late July decided to travel to to the official summer residence in Naantali. In retrospect, it appears this was too early. In his memoirs Kalle Westerlund, the president's head chauffeur, recounts how one day he had to bodily carry the old man from the sauna back to the main Kultaranta villa as Kallio's strength had failed him in the heat.
A local doctor in Naantali had been reached to attend the president after his collapse on the town pier. The president was alive but unconscious. There was a nasty cut on his head. It was decided that calling an ambulance would take too much time. Thus, it was again the trusty Westerlund who was called upon to help Kallio. In the presence of the worried-looking young doctor and with the help of two plain-clothed State Police officers present, the bear-like former Olympic medalist [1] lifted the president into the back seat of the 1938 Buick Special 8 and then took him post-haste into the Provincial Hospital in nearby Turku where better care could be organized.
The news about the president's accident were broadcast to the Finnish people on the Yleisradio on August 3rd, and the story made it into the evening editions of the capital papers as well. The reaction was a subdued-kind of a shock: nobody really was surprised about what had happened, but what with other recent negative news items, Kallio's stroke had a sobering effect on a nation on its summer holidays.
Upon the incapacitation of the President of the Republic, his duties fell on the shoulders of the Prime Minister. This was nothing new for Cajander who in practice had had to handle a lot of the president's duties and official appearances during the first half of the year. What the Prime Minister now lost, however, was even the possibility of getting the president's opinion and counsel on things where they would have been needed.
By the third day of Kallio's continued incapacitation he was moved to the Helsinki University Hospital, flown from Turku to Helsinki on AERO Oy's Junkers Ju 52 passenger aircraft chartered for the occasion. As the AERO pilot Väinö Bremer landed the plane at Helsinki's new Malmi airport, opened only the previous year, several thousand concerned Helsinkians had come to see the still unconscious president and his serious but determined wife return to the Finnish capital. Kaisa Kallio was visibly moved by the spontaneous display of loyalty to his husband.
On the day before the Finnish president returned to the capital, never to spend another summer in the Kultaranta villa again, the Finnish Foreign Minister Eljas Erkko was approached by the Soviet diplomat Pavel Orlov, then working for the Scandinavian Section of the Soviet Foreign Ministry, concerning ”matters of mutual interest”. When Erkko then received Orlov, he learned that what the Soviets wanted was a rekindling of the discussions about territorial reorganization between Finland and the USSR – or that was at least how the Soviet side would phrase it. In the discussions that followed, Orlov would rehash the spring's suggestions about Finland giving Russia areas on the Karelian Isthmus, as well as several islands on the Gulf of Finland. The ideas about joint fortification of the Åland Islands, as well as leasing the USSR a part of the Hanko Peninsula for military use were floated again. On the same day as Orlov first met Erkko, on August 5th, J.K. Paasikivi, the Finnish ambassador in Stockholm, met Alexandra Kollontai, his Soviet counterpart, at a diplomatic reception in the Swedish capital. Kollontai hinted to Paasikivi that Finland should take Orlov's message seriously – it was, according to her, drawn up at the highest level of Soviet officialdom, and Orlov thus should be seen as a messenger directly from the Kremlin.
Historians tend to disagree as to how much Kallio's incapacitation and its fallout in the Finnish political system had an effect on hastening the Soviets reaching out to Helsinki with their demands this time. The Swedish historian Per Nyström, an authority on the Finnish Social Democratic politicians of the Second World War period, argues in his article about Väinö Tanner's work in the Finnish wartime cabinets [2] that Kallio's condition most likely did not have an effect on the Soviet timing at all, but then on the other hand in the recent Finnish historiography it has been suggested that Stalin considered Kallio's combined stroke and accident as a suitable opening to again put the squeeze on Helsinki. This suggestion often includes the corollary that, as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Agreement between the USSR and Hitler's Germany was being finalized at the same time, it is possible that Moscow saw these Finnish developments as an opening where concessions by Finland could be made into a fait accompli by the time the agreement would be ultimately signed, giving the USSR a head start into taking control of its Baltic sphere of influence.[3]
What ever the truth about the matter is (and only the possibility to delve liberally into Soviet archives would give us the chance to say something definitive about it), it has to be noted that the issue is quite minor in comparison to other developments in August 1939. Generally speaking, the Finnish president's unfortunate condition and the newfound Soviet interest into Finnish territory had an immediate effect on the Finnish cabinet and the national military leadership. What extant information we have about the cabinet and Defence Council meetings over the following weekend allows us to understand that the Finnish leaders saw Kallio's condition and the new Soviet proposal as a significant weakening of Finland's foreign political position in European conditions where such a development was more unwanted than on ordinary days. C.G. Mannerheim had been recently embroiled in discussions with the politicians over funding the military, having suggested acquiring a sizable loan from the United States to buy the Finnish Army new, modern equipment as soon as possible, and he felt that any weakening of the Finnish position towards the USSR would make it more unlikely that such a loan could be organized.
Most topically, what the changed situation reflected into were the major Finnish war games just starting in the Viipuri area in southern Karelia in the following days. Similar military exercises on the Karelian Isthmus were by 1939 a tradition that had been upheld through the interwar years. The Isthmus was seen as the most likely location for a major attack against Finland from the east, and thus defence of the area was a main feature of Finnish pre-WWII strategic planning. In the summer of 1939, the increasingly volatile situation in Europe had prompted the Finns also to increase fortification efforts on the Isthmus; in a significant show of patriotism, many bunkers and trenches had been build over the summer months even by young, unpaid volunteers from different parts of the country.
In the August 1939 exercise, due to involve over 20 000 men from different infantry, artillery and cavalry units, as well as from the air force and the navy, the scenario included an incursion by a ”yellow” invading force attacking from the southeast, pushing back the ”white” defender's screening forces to the eastern side of Viipuri before being stopped there. After the concentration of the main ”white” forces to the northwest of Viipuri would be completed, a general ”white” counterattack to push back the ”yellow” forces would then follow. The ”white” forces would be led by Major General Hanell and the ”yellow” forces by Lieutenant General Laatikainen. The corps commander, Lieutenant General Öhquist, would act as a referee, a role for which the meticulous, pedantic officer was well-suited. The exercise would then be wrapped up by a major military parade in Viipuri.
These war games, that were due to become the biggest of their kind in 1930s Finland, would be a show of force and independent defensive capability by the Finnish military, and they would be attended by several significant foreign guests. This included the Swedish Defence Minister Per Sköld, the Danish military's C-in-C, General William Prior, the Swedish generals Erik Testrup and Ernst Linder [4], as well as a number of foreign defence attachés. From the Finnish side, Field Marshal Mannerheim was due to attend the exercise in its entirety, as would the minister of defence, Niukkanen, and the minister of the interior, Kekkonen, along with with the commander of the Civil Guards, General Malmberg. General Walden, Mannerheim's right-hand man in the Defence Council would be there, and a number of Finnish members of parliament as well.
Now, to boost the message this display of Finnish will and ability for defence, and of national unity, a number of last-minute changes to the war games were agreed upon. On the political side, Prime Minister Cajander, now de facto Acting President, would also join the exercise for the whole duration, in the company of Mannerheim, Niukkanen and Kekkonen, instead of attending only the closing ceremonies and official reception in Viipuri. On the military side, also the scope of the exercise was inflated: more troops were ordered into readiness across the nation, a part of the Coastal Fleet was ordered to sail to Viipuri to show the flag [5], and, finally, a number of new live-fire exercises was set up for the infantry and the artillery, as well as two more exercises involving the Air Force's new Blenheim bombers. As a result of these last minute changes agreed upon by the military leadership and put into motion just a couple of days before the main part of the war games was due to start [6], several Finnish military garrisons and the immediate Viipuri area would be at the end of the first week of August veritable ant hills of frantic activity.
All in all, the Finnish leadership's approach to the war games was thus ”striking the iron when it is hot” and capitalizing on an event that had the potential take attention away from Kallio's stroke and the renewed Soviet demands, internally and externally, and also bolster Finland's position in Moscow's and Stockholm's eyes, not to mention those of other foreign powers. There were voices of dissent towards this approach, too. In Stockholm, J.K. Paasikivi disagreed with the decisions that had been made, and in his diary calls the enlargement of the war games ”inconsiderate and rash action, bordering on foolish warmongering”. The future would show whether the experienced diplomat was right in his assessment.
...
Notes:
[1] Karl Mauritz ”Kalle” Westerlund was an accomplished wrestler, and had achieved Olympic bronze in Greco-Roman wrestling in the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris. Westerlund served as the head chauffeur for all the presidents of the Finnish First Republic.
[2] See Nyström's article ”Väinö Tanner: The Last Man Standing” in the Foreign History Quarterly, 2/1987.
[3] One example to mention here is Juuso Kiveliö's recent book on the decisions of the Finnish pre-war governments, Ojasta allikkoon: Cajanderin hallitus ja elokuun kriisi uudessa tarkastelussa. (”Out of the Frying Pan and Into the Fire: A new look into the Cajander cabinet and the August Crisis”).
[4] Linder was well-known in Finland for volunteering to fight on the White side in the Finnish Civil War in 1918 and acting as one of Mannerheim's closest subordinates during the crucial first years of the creation of the independent Finnish military. Incidentally, Linder was also an accomplished Olympic athlete, being the gold medalist in individual dressage with his horse Piccolomino in the 1924 Olympics.
[5] This included both the sail training ship Suomen Joutsen and the armored coastal ship Ilmarinen, which on the morning of August 6th left the Katajanokka military harbor in Helsinki, both determined to beat the other to Viipuri. The diesel-electric Ilmarinen quite expectedly won this impromptu race, but the Suomen Joutsen managed to put up a surprisingly good effort well until outside Kotka when it ran out of favorable winds.
[6] The man ultimately in charge of the practical organization of the war games was Lieutenant General Hugo Österman, the Commander of the Military Forces (Sotaväen päällikkö).
...
To Be Continued
Eight: The Last Summer in Kultaranta
In just one night
The forest behind the lake
Flashed into yellow fire
Now the evening star's fiery sword
Cuts and slashes the dark waters
My heart shudders
And reaches out for a summer
One never to return
Mika Waltari: Tuuli pohjoinen – Runoja (”A Northern Wind – Poems”), 1965.
That President Kallio had health problems was not news to the Finnish people. The president had suffered a stroke in January 1939, and only in early July had the president's office given out a statement that Kallio had not yet fully recovered from the ordeal. All through the summer, Kallio's health was closely monitored by his private physician. The president had spent much of the summer convalescing in Mänttä, and had only in late July decided to travel to to the official summer residence in Naantali. In retrospect, it appears this was too early. In his memoirs Kalle Westerlund, the president's head chauffeur, recounts how one day he had to bodily carry the old man from the sauna back to the main Kultaranta villa as Kallio's strength had failed him in the heat.
A local doctor in Naantali had been reached to attend the president after his collapse on the town pier. The president was alive but unconscious. There was a nasty cut on his head. It was decided that calling an ambulance would take too much time. Thus, it was again the trusty Westerlund who was called upon to help Kallio. In the presence of the worried-looking young doctor and with the help of two plain-clothed State Police officers present, the bear-like former Olympic medalist [1] lifted the president into the back seat of the 1938 Buick Special 8 and then took him post-haste into the Provincial Hospital in nearby Turku where better care could be organized.
The news about the president's accident were broadcast to the Finnish people on the Yleisradio on August 3rd, and the story made it into the evening editions of the capital papers as well. The reaction was a subdued-kind of a shock: nobody really was surprised about what had happened, but what with other recent negative news items, Kallio's stroke had a sobering effect on a nation on its summer holidays.
Upon the incapacitation of the President of the Republic, his duties fell on the shoulders of the Prime Minister. This was nothing new for Cajander who in practice had had to handle a lot of the president's duties and official appearances during the first half of the year. What the Prime Minister now lost, however, was even the possibility of getting the president's opinion and counsel on things where they would have been needed.
By the third day of Kallio's continued incapacitation he was moved to the Helsinki University Hospital, flown from Turku to Helsinki on AERO Oy's Junkers Ju 52 passenger aircraft chartered for the occasion. As the AERO pilot Väinö Bremer landed the plane at Helsinki's new Malmi airport, opened only the previous year, several thousand concerned Helsinkians had come to see the still unconscious president and his serious but determined wife return to the Finnish capital. Kaisa Kallio was visibly moved by the spontaneous display of loyalty to his husband.
On the day before the Finnish president returned to the capital, never to spend another summer in the Kultaranta villa again, the Finnish Foreign Minister Eljas Erkko was approached by the Soviet diplomat Pavel Orlov, then working for the Scandinavian Section of the Soviet Foreign Ministry, concerning ”matters of mutual interest”. When Erkko then received Orlov, he learned that what the Soviets wanted was a rekindling of the discussions about territorial reorganization between Finland and the USSR – or that was at least how the Soviet side would phrase it. In the discussions that followed, Orlov would rehash the spring's suggestions about Finland giving Russia areas on the Karelian Isthmus, as well as several islands on the Gulf of Finland. The ideas about joint fortification of the Åland Islands, as well as leasing the USSR a part of the Hanko Peninsula for military use were floated again. On the same day as Orlov first met Erkko, on August 5th, J.K. Paasikivi, the Finnish ambassador in Stockholm, met Alexandra Kollontai, his Soviet counterpart, at a diplomatic reception in the Swedish capital. Kollontai hinted to Paasikivi that Finland should take Orlov's message seriously – it was, according to her, drawn up at the highest level of Soviet officialdom, and Orlov thus should be seen as a messenger directly from the Kremlin.
Historians tend to disagree as to how much Kallio's incapacitation and its fallout in the Finnish political system had an effect on hastening the Soviets reaching out to Helsinki with their demands this time. The Swedish historian Per Nyström, an authority on the Finnish Social Democratic politicians of the Second World War period, argues in his article about Väinö Tanner's work in the Finnish wartime cabinets [2] that Kallio's condition most likely did not have an effect on the Soviet timing at all, but then on the other hand in the recent Finnish historiography it has been suggested that Stalin considered Kallio's combined stroke and accident as a suitable opening to again put the squeeze on Helsinki. This suggestion often includes the corollary that, as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Agreement between the USSR and Hitler's Germany was being finalized at the same time, it is possible that Moscow saw these Finnish developments as an opening where concessions by Finland could be made into a fait accompli by the time the agreement would be ultimately signed, giving the USSR a head start into taking control of its Baltic sphere of influence.[3]
What ever the truth about the matter is (and only the possibility to delve liberally into Soviet archives would give us the chance to say something definitive about it), it has to be noted that the issue is quite minor in comparison to other developments in August 1939. Generally speaking, the Finnish president's unfortunate condition and the newfound Soviet interest into Finnish territory had an immediate effect on the Finnish cabinet and the national military leadership. What extant information we have about the cabinet and Defence Council meetings over the following weekend allows us to understand that the Finnish leaders saw Kallio's condition and the new Soviet proposal as a significant weakening of Finland's foreign political position in European conditions where such a development was more unwanted than on ordinary days. C.G. Mannerheim had been recently embroiled in discussions with the politicians over funding the military, having suggested acquiring a sizable loan from the United States to buy the Finnish Army new, modern equipment as soon as possible, and he felt that any weakening of the Finnish position towards the USSR would make it more unlikely that such a loan could be organized.
Most topically, what the changed situation reflected into were the major Finnish war games just starting in the Viipuri area in southern Karelia in the following days. Similar military exercises on the Karelian Isthmus were by 1939 a tradition that had been upheld through the interwar years. The Isthmus was seen as the most likely location for a major attack against Finland from the east, and thus defence of the area was a main feature of Finnish pre-WWII strategic planning. In the summer of 1939, the increasingly volatile situation in Europe had prompted the Finns also to increase fortification efforts on the Isthmus; in a significant show of patriotism, many bunkers and trenches had been build over the summer months even by young, unpaid volunteers from different parts of the country.
In the August 1939 exercise, due to involve over 20 000 men from different infantry, artillery and cavalry units, as well as from the air force and the navy, the scenario included an incursion by a ”yellow” invading force attacking from the southeast, pushing back the ”white” defender's screening forces to the eastern side of Viipuri before being stopped there. After the concentration of the main ”white” forces to the northwest of Viipuri would be completed, a general ”white” counterattack to push back the ”yellow” forces would then follow. The ”white” forces would be led by Major General Hanell and the ”yellow” forces by Lieutenant General Laatikainen. The corps commander, Lieutenant General Öhquist, would act as a referee, a role for which the meticulous, pedantic officer was well-suited. The exercise would then be wrapped up by a major military parade in Viipuri.
These war games, that were due to become the biggest of their kind in 1930s Finland, would be a show of force and independent defensive capability by the Finnish military, and they would be attended by several significant foreign guests. This included the Swedish Defence Minister Per Sköld, the Danish military's C-in-C, General William Prior, the Swedish generals Erik Testrup and Ernst Linder [4], as well as a number of foreign defence attachés. From the Finnish side, Field Marshal Mannerheim was due to attend the exercise in its entirety, as would the minister of defence, Niukkanen, and the minister of the interior, Kekkonen, along with with the commander of the Civil Guards, General Malmberg. General Walden, Mannerheim's right-hand man in the Defence Council would be there, and a number of Finnish members of parliament as well.
Now, to boost the message this display of Finnish will and ability for defence, and of national unity, a number of last-minute changes to the war games were agreed upon. On the political side, Prime Minister Cajander, now de facto Acting President, would also join the exercise for the whole duration, in the company of Mannerheim, Niukkanen and Kekkonen, instead of attending only the closing ceremonies and official reception in Viipuri. On the military side, also the scope of the exercise was inflated: more troops were ordered into readiness across the nation, a part of the Coastal Fleet was ordered to sail to Viipuri to show the flag [5], and, finally, a number of new live-fire exercises was set up for the infantry and the artillery, as well as two more exercises involving the Air Force's new Blenheim bombers. As a result of these last minute changes agreed upon by the military leadership and put into motion just a couple of days before the main part of the war games was due to start [6], several Finnish military garrisons and the immediate Viipuri area would be at the end of the first week of August veritable ant hills of frantic activity.
All in all, the Finnish leadership's approach to the war games was thus ”striking the iron when it is hot” and capitalizing on an event that had the potential take attention away from Kallio's stroke and the renewed Soviet demands, internally and externally, and also bolster Finland's position in Moscow's and Stockholm's eyes, not to mention those of other foreign powers. There were voices of dissent towards this approach, too. In Stockholm, J.K. Paasikivi disagreed with the decisions that had been made, and in his diary calls the enlargement of the war games ”inconsiderate and rash action, bordering on foolish warmongering”. The future would show whether the experienced diplomat was right in his assessment.
...
Notes:
[1] Karl Mauritz ”Kalle” Westerlund was an accomplished wrestler, and had achieved Olympic bronze in Greco-Roman wrestling in the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris. Westerlund served as the head chauffeur for all the presidents of the Finnish First Republic.
[2] See Nyström's article ”Väinö Tanner: The Last Man Standing” in the Foreign History Quarterly, 2/1987.
[3] One example to mention here is Juuso Kiveliö's recent book on the decisions of the Finnish pre-war governments, Ojasta allikkoon: Cajanderin hallitus ja elokuun kriisi uudessa tarkastelussa. (”Out of the Frying Pan and Into the Fire: A new look into the Cajander cabinet and the August Crisis”).
[4] Linder was well-known in Finland for volunteering to fight on the White side in the Finnish Civil War in 1918 and acting as one of Mannerheim's closest subordinates during the crucial first years of the creation of the independent Finnish military. Incidentally, Linder was also an accomplished Olympic athlete, being the gold medalist in individual dressage with his horse Piccolomino in the 1924 Olympics.
[5] This included both the sail training ship Suomen Joutsen and the armored coastal ship Ilmarinen, which on the morning of August 6th left the Katajanokka military harbor in Helsinki, both determined to beat the other to Viipuri. The diesel-electric Ilmarinen quite expectedly won this impromptu race, but the Suomen Joutsen managed to put up a surprisingly good effort well until outside Kotka when it ran out of favorable winds.
[6] The man ultimately in charge of the practical organization of the war games was Lieutenant General Hugo Österman, the Commander of the Military Forces (Sotaväen päällikkö).
...
To Be Continued
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