ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the British response to plans by the Finnish Government and military to fortify the Åland Islands, which lay in the Gulf of Bothnia between Finland and Sweden, and also looks at the British attempts at involvement in the Finnish rearmament programme. On both issues, diplomats working at the Northern Department of the Foreign Office in London aimed to hold or contain German influence and penetration into the northern Baltic area. As will be shown, in the case of the Åland Islands, the means of achieving this goal changed from opposition to refortification to qualified support for the Finnish proposals. At the same time that the British diplomats were pursuing this aim by attempting to convince the Finns that Britain was a better friend than Germany, the British were aware of the problems posed by what might be termed the Soviet dimension and the mutual suspicions which divided Finland and the Soviet Union. This chapter underlines the importance which the Northern Department attached to allaying Soviet fears, and preventing the expansion of German interests in the Baltic. Due to the competing interests of Finland and the USSR, this was not an easy matter, and this chapter illuminates the problems which the Northern Department had to deal with in pursuing this idea.
