Since early February, our success on the Finnish front has become quite evident. We are stubbornly battering the Mannerheim Line and gradually breaking through. A little more and the turning point in the war will be a fait accompli. The enemies of the USSR – the friends of Mannerheim, Tanner and Co. – are very worked up: they sense that the end of their adventure is nigh. And they try to mobilize new forces against us while they still have time.

Immense efforts are being made to push Scandinavia, and primarily Sweden, into a direct intervention in Finland. This is being done both inside and outside Sweden. Sandler and his followers are active inside Sweden. Their arguments boil down to the following. The USSR will not be content with swallowing up Finland, but will advance further towards the shores of the Atlantic through Sweden and Norway. Germany will join it. Or vice versa: as soon as the USSR occupies Finland, the Germans will march into Sweden, and the USSR will join Germany. In both cases, Sweden and Norway will, in the very near future, have to fight for their lives against the ‘imperialisms’ of Germany and the Soviet Union. That is why it is better for Sweden to help Finland openly now, while Finland is still able to fight. All the more so as Sweden and Norway can count on receiving military aid from the ‘Allies’. How strong is this tendency? Hard to say. But Prytz, who has just spent a couple of days in Stockholm, assured Halifax the other day that the movement in support of intervention is growing very rapidly in Sweden and that he wouldn’t be surprised to find Sweden and the USSR at war within a matter of weeks.

The British and the French are moving in the same direction. Daladier has just summoned Scandinavian representatives and demanded that they should give Finland their entire reserve force, promising to recompense them in full. The Scandinavians, however, responded very [word missing]. The Second International, and especially the French socialists, are pressing hard along similar lines, even demanding that relations with the USSR be broken off.

The British are acting rather more cautiously. They are swelling the Swedes’ and Norwegians’ fear of the USSR, attempting to push both countries to intervene directly in Finland. But until this becomes a certainty, they restrict themselves to sending weapons to Helsinki and to organizing ‘stimulated voluntary service’ (as Beaverbrook put it in our recent conversation). England and France have already sent 300 planes and intend to send some 400 more. They are also sending artillery and anti-aircraft weapons. Sweden, which the British government has promised to compensate fully in kind or in cash, is giving a great deal. Ironside makes the following calculations. The USSR will not accomplish anything decisive before mid-March. Then military operations will get bogged down for a month and a half because of the thaw and the slush. Serious operations will be resumed no earlier than May, and the whole campaign will end, if the USSR is lucky, no earlier than mid-summer. Russian losses will reach nearly half a million. This should weaken the USSR to such a degree that it will hardly be capable of mounting a full-scale attack on Sweden and Norway. I fear that Ironside is mistaken. It’s not the first time it’s happened to him: the same thing happened in Arkhangelsk 20 years ago. All these calculations are based on the assumption that Sweden and Norway will not interfere directly in the conflict. If they do interfere, then more enticing prospects will open before those who wish to see an expansion of the war. In this scenario, it is clear that Germany will also advance on Scandinavia. Britain’s hands will be untied. They will break through to the Baltic and land a 30,000–40,000-strong force in Narvik to capture and hold the region of Kiruna (iron ore).

In our conversation of 10 February, Beaverbrook defined the situation as follows: ‘If Sweden and Norway remain neutral, British aid to Finland will most probably not exceed that which the Soviet government gave to the Spanish Republicans. If Sweden and Norway openly intervene, England and France will give them maximum military support.’

That seems about right.

Three days ago, Halifax stated in a confidential talk with several top journalists that the British government does not intend to declare war itself on the USSR, but that, on the other hand, the danger of the USSR declaring war on Britain would not keep the British government from carrying out its plans in respect of Finland.

In other words, the British government plans to assist Mannerheim in so far as it is able to (which depends to a great extent on the position of Sweden and Norway), no matter what the reaction of the USSR might be. I think Halifax overdid it a bit. Well, time will tell.