Comparatively, transporting anything in major numbers through Petsamo and overland through Sweden and Norway is much more difficult and expensive.
It is plain that Petsamo is not worth much as port to supply all Finland, due to the lack of decent roads out of there to Finland's major population centers in the south.
It is also plain that seaborne trade is always the most economical way to go, and that as OTL, when the Germans took Denmark and thus could have an effective veto on whom the Finns could trade with by sea, that put a burden on Finnish imports and exports.
It is laughable, with a bitter laugh, to put forth Petsamo as a suitable port, or to look to the short and distant, isolated direct border with Norway in that region as some sort of magic door to enable Finns to get all the trade they need. And I don't know about the author but I am indebted to you for sharing these sad facts regarding the appallingly bad logistics from the Arctic Sea region to Finland proper down at is southern end.
Here's what I wonder though--granted all trade routes that involve an overland haul are more expensive--just how bad is the route you are rarely mentioning or considering here--Norwegian port of Trondheim, over the mountains (I believe there has always been since medieval times considerable trade between the Trondelag and the region of Sweden just over the mountains and if decent developed communications cross the border mountains anywhere they do so here--including heavy rail lines) and thus from this inland district of western Sweden to the major port of Stockholm itself.
You certainly give some concrete idea with clear numbers how inadequate attempting to use Petsamo is. But surely the Trondheim-East Sweden rail option is nowhere near that awful, if we grant it can't be quite as economical as peacetime shipping through the Danish straits. You show clearly that trying to run the necessary trade through Lapland, capacity is below a quarter that of seaborne normal and that at ruinously costs involving monopolizing the nation's truck fleet.
ha
But surely it is a lot less costly than that to just haul things over from Trondheim through Sweden?
I am reflecting that actually the author is sort of making your case for you--because post number fifty ("L") is all about a dashing convoy run from Bergen to Oslofjord--and why bother to do this if the railroads out of Trondheim are anything like what I am cracking them up to be? If rail is "close enough for government work" to sea transport as I am suggesting, why the hell risk anything whatsoever to haul anything past the German occupation zone? Just bypass it, using rail connecting Trondheim and Bergen to the capital. Yet the author has the convoy happening as though these rail alternates did not exist at all.
Still, having put numbers and other stark conditions on the Petsamo route, surely the Trondheim route must be far less costly than that. To start with we don't need any trucks whatsoever, the rail line does exist, No need to monopolize the trucks then.
Supplying Finland all the goods it needs will be much more demanding through the north, especially if the Swedish put any restrictions on using their territory, roads and railways (in the name of neutrality and in view of likely German and Soviet protests
Right--but why should the Swedes put any restrictions on it? If goods ship from Trondheim to Stockholm and thence on to Finland, Swedish carriers get their revenues after all.
Obviously, because Hitler will be getting mad if he is denied control over Finland and Sweden!
But while his leverage over both Finnish and Swedish trade through the strait is complete, neither Baltic nation is therefore cut off and communicating only at his pleasure. We need an evaluation, not just of the admittedly poor and costly route of limited capacity through Petsamo and even Narvik--clearly superior to Petsamo even for Finland, and that before the obvious measure of adding more track to that route to greatly improve its capacity, which obviously would take some time, but of course plainly not so great for keeping an entire nation adequately fed let alone supplied with arms--but also to the yet greater capacity communications via Trondheim. Short of issuing an ultimatum threatening conquest if they do not comply to Sweden, there is not a damn thing (other than trying to harry Allied shipping with U-boats, which is a much reduced threat in this TL by summer 1940, despite the Axis ruling the French and Low Country coasts as OTL) he can do to stop cargoes going that way, both directions. Finland has the option of selling whatever "strategic materials" the British were negotiating to secure from them before the OTL fall of Denmark and Norway, and getting supplies, via Sweden.
OTL the Swedes bent under the blast of Hitler's apparent supremacy but never quite broke. They let the Germans route troops through Sweden to Norway after Norway had fallen. Here the Swedes are in a better position by far; Hitler risks tipping them over to outright joining the Allies, which he can punish the Swedes for doing by bombing their southern regions, but cannot I think decimate Stockholm even before the Allies reinforce Swedish air defenses; the Germans can try to sink the Swedish fleet but of course have no surface vessels worth mentioning to assist the Luftwaffe trying to do that all alone, and again Swedish air power is not inconsiderable and will cost Goering. Using U-boats and aircraft to hurt the Swedes in rage can only divert them and rack up more losses. Then Sweden can mobilize and that country's military potential is well over double Norway's.
The most rational thing for Hitler to do is forbear with Sweden a lot, as with his harebrained scheme to hang on in south Norway to come back later at that beachhead, he would best hope to teach the Swedes their lesson after his anticipated victory in Russia. Hitler could reasonably object to open cooperation between Norwegian and British and other Allied forces, but not to this neutral nation trading freely over its land connections to Norway--in fact in terms of legalities, trying to clamp down on either Swedish or Finnish merchant trade through the Danish channels is bordering on acts of war and violation of neutrality that, with the Swedes and Finns both having alternatives to Axis supply, might be construed as forcing them into the Alliance.
There is no reason here for the Swedes to comply as much with German wishes as OTL, and not even for the Finns to.
I've failed to track this TL's developments properly myself--I was quite puzzled how we suddenly jumped from summer 1940 to summer 1941 but of course we have had many posts fast forwarding past summer and autumn and winter and now apparently spring to bring us to the early days of Barbarossa. I take issue with the German occupation of south Norway's coast not being terminated already by such a late date but that is another topic. As for developments in Finland...these should have started diverging drastically from OTL by early summer of 1940.
Nothing would butterfly away the Moscow treaty of 12 March 1940 of course, or make Finland in any less an abject position in terms of her own shorn resources--but everything points to a different Allied policy going back at least a year from the last canon post!
Of course I can't, as in a previous post, think in terms of postwar hindsight. In the entire period from the Fall of France to the launching of Barbarossa, there is no reason to think that Soviet policy would be diverted, unless the Allies were to make vigorous efforts to change it. In this complacent period, Stalin and the Soviets generally were under the impression they would be able to finish the job of conquering Finland fairly soon, and it was this Soviet aggression the Finns needed some defense against.
OTL for instance the Finns sought to promote a Scandinavian Union, but even before Hitler preempted that by conquering Denmark and Norway and thus putting a severe arm lock on Sweden, the Soviets rumbled against any alliance of Finland with Sweden alone. Hitler is not the problem here, Stalin is. Barbarossa is too late for the Western Allies to come in after the last minute to offer brokered deals, and prior to that watershed, the Finns clearly cannot formally join the Allies even if some kind of magic gate gave them access to all the materials and allied forces they might wish for--doing so would be provocative and probably trigger a Soviet renewed invasion.
But I do think there is potential for negotiating Finnish neutrality. The Soviets won't favor it, but perhaps if they can see the Finns must ally to the Axis but that accepting some kind of arrangement to guarantee Finland gets fed and can acquire a reasonable self-defense might persuade them not to do that--provided the Soviets back off and reduce their OTL hungry growling noises.
The most plausible route I can imagine is that the USA, that is specifically the Roosevelt Administration, gets involved using a lot of backchannel tricks. Unlike Sir Stafford Cripps, who for some crazy reason the British National Unity government sent in to Helsinki as ambassador, and allegedly took a quite churlish pro-Soviet stance (this all before Barbarossa, so the USSR might have been construed to be actually Axis and anyway had zero commitment to the Allied cause) FDR was constrained by US domestic politics to speak up for Finland in the Interim Peace period OTL.
In turn the obvious ATL variable is the Norwegian mission to the USA. If the Norwegians think of a scheme to neutralize Finland effectively--their motive in this being that Finland's practical options were to either surrender to the Soviets, or join the Axis, unless a third neutral path were opened up--then I think that even Allied leaders with very acerbic anti-Soviet attitudes who think of the USSR as a de facto Axis power itself and never anticipate being allied with them--might see merit in providing the Finns this way out. Their motive is not so much to protect the Finns from Soviet conquest but mainly to keep them out of the Axis.
Depending on just how good the logistics are through Trondheim (to which the less suitable routes to the north add capabilities, not detract from it, albeit perhaps not much) both Baltic neutral nations might well be able to import both what arms they might need (well, not naval ones, but anything else) via Trondheim, and export anything they like. OTL it would be awkward for both to have to depend on Swedish naval construction capacity alone, but with the extra decimation of the KM here, that is far less of a problem now.
If in fact the Trondheim-Stockholm overland route is not really adequate, it must at any rate be far more capacious than the far northern routes via the northern wastelands. If not fully adequate, the Allied interest in Finland remaining neutral for the moment has another card to play--Non governmental organization (the Red Cross) assistance via neutral nations. The USA and Sweden are currently neutral.
Now why should a power like the USA be the least bit concerned? Well note that aside from the interest of US arms firms in selling stuff to all and sundry, which arguably is now diverted to the active Allies anyway, there was certainly some pro-Finnish sentiment in the US.
And if food shortages are at issue, note that a New Deal response to the Depression was farm subsidies--American farmers were being paid not to grow crops. The USA can raise its food production very easily, and American farmers will have an interest in selling real crops if they can.
Meanwhile during the "Interim Peace" period for Finland, there is no great value to the Allies having Finland actually join the Allies actively, and until Barbarossa the Soviets see all strength built up in Finland as a threat. But if the Soviets could be persuaded to back off and stop threatening conquest outright, and the Finns persuaded not to pursue Axis alliance, then many here have remarked on the benefits of that.
American charity can thus step in to further FDR's ambition to aid the Allies. With back channel coordination by the Administration, ostensibly private donations to the charitable cause of keeping Finland fed and generally viable, to the American Red Cross, can provide the funds to purchase the authorized farm production increase, and this food, medicine etc shipped on to Norway, for transshipment to Sweden, where the Swedish Red Cross chapter receives the food or perhaps instead merely custody of the funds. Now the Swedish Red Cross relays goods on to Finland by normal trade channels; Finns get adequate food and so forth donated free or at a subsidized low cost.
If the USA enters the war, still not a problem; Sweden and Finland can remain neutral, it is not even like any US ships had been docking in either nation's ports. Shipments continue to Norway, get passed on to Sweden and thus on to Finland.
