October 30, 1939
Southern Finland, Helsinki, the capital of Finland Finnish President Ky??sti Kallio and Pri Minister Risto Ryti were greeting the Soviet People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs (Foreign Minister), Vyacheslav Molotov.
"Welco, Commissar Molotov."
Having received reports that the Soviet Army was being deployed to the Finnish border, they couldn't hide their tension.
In contrast, Molotov wore a completely relaxed expression.
"A pleasure to et you, President, Pri Minister."
Molotov greeted them with an attitude far too casual for addressing the heads of a nation, then sat down before he was even offered a seat.
But neither Kallio nor Ryti could point out his rude behavior and simply sat down themselves.
Finland, a small country on the Baltic Sea and the Scandinavian Peninsula, and once a colony of the Russian Empire.
And the Soviet Union, born from burning down that Russian Empire in the flas of revolution.
There was that much of a gap between the two nations.
Molotov deliberately took his ti while Kallio and Ryti waited, then brought out the list of demands he had prepared.
"Comrade General Secretary Stalin has sent
to resolve the situation in which the security of Leningrad, the holy land of the Russian revolution, is being threatened by your 'counter-revolutionary' country."
Finland was a country that had declared independence during the Red-White Civil War that broke out due to Russia's communist revolution, and unlike Russia, had succeeded in crushing the revolution of its own communists.
So, it was understandable for Molotov to sarcastically call Finland counter-revolutionary, but the notion that Finland, the weakest of the three nations on the Scandinavian Peninsula—Sweden, Norway, and Finland—was a threat to the Soviet Union was utterly absurd.
President Kallio took the docunt Molotov held out and began to read.
As he read down the docunt, President Kallio's long mustache began to tremble, and eventually, it was shaking along with his body, which quivered with rage.
"Cession of Karelia, Lapland, the islands in the Gulf of Finland, and the ??land Islands, and a lease of all major ports for over 30 years? Does this make any sense, Commissar?"
Karelia is Finland's largest industrial zone and most densely populated area.
The demand to plunder the nation's core regions and islands under the pretext that they are close to Leningrad, and to use its major ports at will for over 30 years, was essentially a demand to make Finland a colony of the Soviet Union.
As Pri Minister Ryti's face turned pale at President Kallio's words, Molotov replied with nonchalant ease.
"Whether it makes sense or not is for the Kremlin to judge. So, what is your answer, President?"
President Kallio, though trembling with rage, fell into deep thought.
The difference in national power between Finland and the Soviet Union was beyond words.
Molotov, who brought this proposal, and Stalin, who sent him, must have known this was an unacceptable offer for Finland.
What they truly wanted was to devour Finland whole.
anwhile, Baron Mannerheim, the hero and fad commander of Finland's Red-White Civil War victory, was a dyed-in-the-wool aristocrat who was dissatisfied with the democratic governnt and the state of the backward Finnish military, and was stubbornly threatening to resign at the drop of a hat.
With Mannerheim's resignation letter currently on his office desk, being forced to answer a humiliating demand that would surely lead to war if refused was an incredibly heavy burden.
President Kallio agonized for a long ti, but for him, who had gained nationwide support as a respected leader practicing the politics of harmony, surrendering and selling out his fatherland was out of the question.
Kallio closed his eyes in contemplation for a mont, then glared at Molotov and answered curtly.
"No."
Molotov smirked as if he knew it would co to this and opened his mouth.
"I see. I hope you won't regret that decision."
Molotov rose from his seat and looked down at President Kallio, who sat with a grim face, and declared.
"My role is now over. The rest will be said by the Red Army."
With those words, Molotov left.
"Your Excellency the President…"
At Ryti's worried gaze, Kallio tried his best to relax his stone-hard face and smiled bitterly.
"I suppose I'll have to appease that Mannerheim fellow again.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs will be busy. Let's ask the international community for help…"
Faced with the threat of an overwhelmingly powerful nation, all Finland could do was to use its best cards and hope for help from other countries.
-
November 6, 1939
Kassel and Frankfurt, 9th Military District, Central Germany Ti flew by, and it was already early November. The Italian Front, thanks to the rugged Alps and the Italian Army's poorly-fought battles, was holding up better than expected, but there were still not a few casualties.
Didn't even that Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, say that no one who has looked into the eyes of a soldier before a battle can take war lightly?
This is what war is, in the end. Whether you win or lose, there are always victims.
Now I judge the war situation only by the numbers on reports, but even so, the horrific sight of the battlefield I saw with my own eyes is never forgotten.
Everyone in the new governnt agreed that we had to end the civil war sohow and narrow the front to Italy, and our Reichswehr was in the midst of preparing an offensive operation to deal a decisive blow to the Nazis.
The enemy's armored forces were still superior to ours, but Panzer IVs were beginning to be deployed to front-line units, and the lack of anti-tank capability was expected to be sohow covered by the Panzerj??ger I.
The problem was air superiority.
We were manufacturing fighter aircraft in the regions we'd captured.
But against the elite Luftwaffe, who had gained experience in the Spanish Civil War, sending out rookie pilots who didn't even know what aerial combat was would be a waste of precious lives and fighter aircraft, so there was no solution.
I wonder if Richthofen is cursing
to death right about now. I secretly hoped he would join our side, but I guess it's hard to expect that from the Air Force, which is practically on par with the Nazi SS.
In the end, without an Air Force, we'd have to make do with anti-aircraft guns, but frankly, from my perspective of knowing that this era's anti-aircraft guns weren't much to count on by themselves, I wasn't very confident.
The inferiority in air superiority wasn't sothing that could be solved by worrying about it, so I had no choice but to trust Manstein and the generals of the Reichswehr.
I myself was in the process of completing the General Staff Course at the War Academy, so I was interested in the operation, but there was no way my tactical ability was superior to theirs, right?
A combination of long suffering and good luck had gotten
to a position of real power in the new governnt, but that didn't an I was a superman who was excellent in all fields, nor should I wish to be.
For , the best I could do would be to help the new governnt's personnel use their abilities in the right direction, or to think of things they couldn't co up with due to the limitations of the era.
"What are you thinking so hard about?"
"Ah, it's nothing. Just have a lot of work."
Just look at my aide and fiancée who's helping
right now; no matter how I look at it, as a journalist, she seems better than
with my mories of modern tis.
Claudia rolled her eyes at my words and smirked, then fixed her gaze on the person approaching from the front. The people we were waiting for had arrived.
"It's been a while. Schacht, um- Vice Minister."
"It's good to see you, Mr. Brandt."
I smiled and shook hands with Willy Brandt.
It's been a few years since we t during the Spanish Civil War. Back then, I couldn't have even imagined that eting him would lead
to Claudia.
"Long ti no see, Claudia."
"Good to see you, Bill. You're always working hard."
Willy Brandt very naturally tried to hug Claudia, but she subtly stepped back, making him look embarrassed before he flinched upon seeing .
No, I knew very well that man was a womanizer, but…
Sigh, still, thanks to him, Claudia believed my nonsense, and thinking about the good outco, I'll let it slide this once.
"Ahem, my apologies. We're the sa age and have been comrades for a long ti, so I got carried away by habit."
Your excuse makes you sound even weirder, you idiot.
But I couldn't say that.
Claudia gave an ambiguous smile, and I turned my gaze to the man who had co with Willy Brandt.
Willy Brandt was in his mid-20s, the sa age as Claudia, but the man with him looked to be in his 50s or 60s. He's too old to be a colleague, isn't he?
"Excuse , but who is this?"
While Brandt was fumbling, the man introduced himself directly and offered
a handshake.
"Haha, with such talented young individuals, the future of German Social Democracy is bright. I am V??in?? Tanner. I belong to the Finnish Social Democratic Party, and I am also the Minister of Finance."
"He was also the Pri Minister of Finland."
I'm not exactly a Social Democrat—as I was having such an idle thought, I heard Willy Brandt's additional explanation after his introduction and, flustered, accepted his handshake.
Damn, he was a big shot?
"Welco to Frankfurt, Mr. Minister of Finance. I apologize for not having been able to give you a proper welco, as we had not been contacted in advance."
"Not at all, it was I who was more rude for visiting without prior notice."
No, even so, for a forr Pri Minister to appear so suddenly, what is all this?
Even Claudia, who was always composed, was stiff with shock, so I had no choice but to glare at Willy Brandt, the cause of this incident.
"Uh, well. Um. It gets a bit complicated to explain, so let's move to another spot first."
That Brandt fellow was a great West German Chancellor, but for so reason, my impression of him worsens every ti I see him…
-
I had summoned Willy Brandt, who was in Norway, to discuss preliminary work for bringing back the Social Democrats, anti-Nazi activists, and intellectuals who had fled abroad to escape Nazi oppression after the civil war was over.
The number of intellectuals and scientists who left Germany under the Nazi dictatorship was so large it would be tiring to list them all, and the most famous figure among them was none other than Einstein.
Among them, the Social Democrats were quite organized, to the point of having ford an international organization called the 'World Democratic Socialist Organization'.
Moreover, the connections leading from Claudia to Willy Brandt made it easy to make contact, and accepting foreigners who couldn't yet return to their holands was perfect for promoting that under the new Germany, freedom of thought would be guaranteed regardless of nationality.
Just because we overthrow the Nazis by force doesn't an Germany will imdiately escape the storm of nationalism and beco a normal country.
In fact, things will be more of a headache after we get rid of Hitler and the Nazi regi.
The atmosphere of modern Germany, reflecting and atoning for the Nazis' atrocities, was only properly established long after experiencing that disastrous World War II, after the so-called 'Brandt's Kneel' and the Revolutions of 1968.
And yet, for that Willy Brandt to bring
such a howork assignnt. We moved to a different spot, but Brandt looked sheepish at my dumbfounded expression.
"Haha, don't be like that, Vice Minister. Although there's an age gap, I am also a Social Democrat and we were acquainted, so I took the liberty of asking him."
"In that case, did the Minister of Finance visit simply as an acquaintance of Mr.
Brandt?"
Tanner made a bitter expression at my words. That couldn't be it.
This was not a ti for the Finnish Minister of Finance to be leisurely traveling with an acquaintance.
The demand for surrender that the Soviet Union had thrown at Finland was already widely known throughout the world, and Finland was asking the international community for help, but the reactions were quite lukewarm.
The Soviet proposal was indeed rude and threatening, but it wasn't as if the Soviet Union had declared war just yet, and the world's nations were secretly expecting that a country like Finland would be destroyed in an instant.
I knew about the Winter War between the Soviet Union and Finland, but I never thought that as soon as the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact fell through, they would set Poland aside for a mont and go straight for Finland.
It was the sa in the original history, but I guess that 'Steel Field Marshal' Stalin is not a character who would just quietly test the waters.
"Finland's fate is on the brink, so our Ministry of Foreign Affairs had no capacity. I apologize for that."
"It's also because officially reaching out to the new German governnt, which is in the middle of a war, is a political burden, right?"
It was probably no empty word that Finland's Ministry of Foreign Affairs was extrely busy amidst the international community's indifference, but asking for help from Germany, which was blatantly in the middle of a war, was also a ridiculous thing to do.
If they made an official inquiry and got rejected, it would only make them look bad, and in the process, they might just get on the nerves of a country like France, which doesn't have a good opinion of us.
"Hoho, that part is not entirely absent, of course. But to be frank, there was a bit of personal interest and hope involved."
Personal interest and hope? I was wondering what this was about, when Tanner looked at
steadily and opened his mouth.
"I heard that it was you, Vice Minister, who provided the German Social Democrats with the idea to abandon Marxism and turn to a reform of capitalism, that is, a moderate approach."
I looked from Claudia back to Willy Brandt, and he just shrugged and nodded.
"That is correct, but."
"Hoho, I too have led the Finnish Social Democratic Party with such thoughts. That's why I beca interested in a young man of the sa mind, the Vice Minister, and I heard it from this friend Brandt. That the Vice Minister seems to understand the value of ideology and justification."
So he ca to et
first before an official visit.
V??in?? Tanner, whose face was deeply wrinkled with the passage of ti, looked at
with desperate eyes and spoke.
"We are well aware that your country is at war, but I must shalessly ask. Finland desperately needs help in any form. We don't even have enough rifles to arm our soldiers, but not a single country has offered to help us yet."
The Winter War that Finland fought against the Soviet Union.
In the original history, the Finns proved they were a warrior race and fought well despite overwhelming inferiority, but in the end, they were outnumbered and defeated.
Finland earnestly appealed to the international community for help, but most countries turned a blind eye.
After the war began and Finland surprisingly fought well, they belatedly began to send ager aid, but even that was too little, too late, and they had to surrender due to a lack of ammunition despite their desperate resistance.
"At this rate, Finland will suffer massive losses as soon as it is invaded. I want to at least let the soldiers fight with proper weapons, but we are lacking in everything."
We had bought a large number of surplus rifles from Spain on the cheap and were receiving Lee-Enfield rifles from Britain, so we actually had a decent surplus of German-made rifles.
To us, they were just rifles, but to them, even that must be desperately needed. If I could, I would want to help, even if just a little.
Although it was a war famous for Finland's grit and the Soviet Union's unseemly behavior, wasn't it ultimately a war where they fought and fell alone because they were a weak nation?
It reminds
of Korea in this era, which had been reduced to a colony of Imperial Japan, and it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth to just turn a blind eye.
Starting with a personal request to
rather than formal diplomacy might have been a calculation that it would work on a still young and inexperienced opponent.
But my position has little room for my personal feelings anymore. In the end, I must represent the new German governnt's stance.
"I understand your country's situation well, but as you know, it's hard to say the new German governnt's situation is comfortable either. Even without the civil war, we are at war with Italy, and since Poland has rejected our non-aggression pact, we see them as a potential enemy nation."
That's the problem.
We can deal with Italy. But if Poland gets involved, Germany, having depleted its national power in a civil war, is not a force to be taken lightly.
In the original history, they surrendered in five weeks during the Invasion of Poland, but they held out until the fully prepared German military, which had launched a surprise attack, worried about running out of ammunition, and only fell after the Soviet Army also entered.
But Poland, even at this mont, is increasing its military without lifting its mobilization order, while our heavy equipnt factories in the Nazi German sphere of influence can be considered almost paralyzed.
If Poland attacks us, we would get the justification to solve that hopeless Danzig problem, but no one knows how many sacrifices we would have to make to win that war.
Besides, since Britain and France have given a guarantee of independence, we can't be sure how they would try to intervene.
At least in the original history, Poland was known to have pre-emptively declared war on Nazi Germany because of the Gleiwitz radio station incident.
Still, one must rember that when Nazi Germany advanced into Polish territory, Britain and France declared war on Germany.
The decisive battle with the Nazis is sure to cause great losses. We also have to fight Italy, and the French election is coming up.
Are we supposed to shed countless more blood by fighting a two-front war with Poland just to take Danzig?
For my part, I want to avoid a war with Poland at all costs before the war with Italy is over. The only comfort is that they have another enemy nation, the Soviet Union.
"Perhaps Poland would lend a hand in facing a common threat?"
"They have already rejected our request for an alliance."
Tanner's face was devastated as he said this, and my face hardened too.
What on earth were they thinking to reject that?
Are they giving up on Finland, thinking it won't be a proper military power, and trying to buy ti? Or could it be that they plan to strike us while the Soviet Union is busy devouring Finland?
"That is a regret."
A profound regret for Finland, and for us.
Now that it's co to this, we must also prepare for a possible invasion from Poland.
"I find Finland's situation unfortunate, but the new German governnt is not in a position to provide support without any profit. And it's not sothing I can do just because I want to."
It's truly bitter, but at this point, I almost think it would be better if Finland fell quickly so that Poland wouldn't act rashly.
Ah, I'm starting to hate myself for being so coldly calculating.
As Tanner's face turned ashen, Willy Brandt opened his mouth.
"Is there no profit?"
Having gathered everyone's attention, Brandt continued.
"In the end, even the countries that call themselves the free world or democratic nations are just watching as communists invade a weak nation, aren't they? To be the first to extend a helping hand in the midst of a war would be, symbolically, the most effective ans to announce that Germany has been reborn as a normal country and a mber of the international community."
Is this the perspective of the man who started the unification of Germany, a fact often hidden by his womanizing tendencies? Brandt has a point.
At the very least, to announce that Germany has beco a free country again and is rejoining the international community, to regain its diplomatic status and call back the intellectuals who left Germany, there might be no better publicity stunt than this.
"It doesn't have to be great help. We need a country, even just one, to start the support and show its backing."
Tanner's desperate words deepened my dilemma.
If we were to announce our support for Finland, however ager, in the middle of our own war, the so-called countries of the free world probably wouldn't stay silent. From then on, it would beco a prestige competition, and they would all try to help while making a show of it.
That must be why Finland, rejected by all other nations, has co to us, who have at least raised the banner of freedom, and is pleading so earnestly, even though we are in the middle of a war.
If we support Finland and gain the diplomatic status of a mber of the free world, it would slightly reduce the possibility of Britain or France rashly intervening, even if variables like a war with Poland arise in the future.
But doing so ans sending weapons to another country in the middle of a war, even if they are surplus, and it ans we must be prepared to get on Stalin's bad side before we've even finished our own civil war.
What should I do?
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