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PART XXVII: A NEW FINLAND
Finland had been ruled for most of the 1930s by the National Progressive Party. The party's success in its ability to form a government under Prime Minister Kivimäki in the 1933 elections was a success for the centrists and rightists in preventing the dreaded Social Democrats from forming Government; much of the public's general distrust of the country's largest party stemmed from the actions of the Reds during the Civil War, and was only expanded upon following the banning of the Communist Party in 1930. Anti-communism was indeed a growing force within the country; and the country sharing a border with the rapidly-growing and militarizing Soviet Union did little to calm the fears of the Red Scare.
Prime Minister Toivo Mikael Kivimäki was credited by most on the right for his intelligent use of political capital in both keeping the Social Democrats out of power and maintaining public order.
Kivimäki would end up re-elected, and his Government would survive the July 1936 elections, but after several political blunders the Prime Minister was forced out of power in a vote of no confidence later that year. The July elections seemed to indicate a shift in Finnish politics: the Social Democrats and the Agrarians – a pro-farmer nationalist party – began seriously discussing the possibility of an electoral coalition. These two parties had gained considerably more support in the election; the National Coalition Party (the party of anti-communist President Svinhufvud) took a severe hit, as did the National Progressives. People on the far-right feared a socialist or even communist takeover in future elections. Kivimäki's successor was Kyösti Kallio.
As 1936 turned into 1937, the Finnish people prepared for the January presidential election. The President's refusal to let the Social Democrats into Government, and Agrarian leader (and current provisional Prime Minister) Kyösti Kallio's relatively warm feelings toward them, dominated the election season. People were concerned over the economic recovery of the country from the Depression, which had been going relatively smoothly since 1933, and the rising influence and support for quasi-fascist movements, even after the Mäntsälä rebellion of 1932. In a decisive victory, Kallio won the election and became the fourth President of Finland. It seemed to be a victory for the centrists and leftists, and Kallio refused to interfere in the goings-on of the Parliament.
President Kallio, though a nationalist, made many rightists fear that Finland would begin a long and tortuous shift to the left.
Kallio's replacement as Prime Minister, Aimo Kaarlo Cajandar, was a National Progressive, who was instructed by the party leadership to form a working coalition between leftists and centrists. This was achieved by an agreement being forged between the Social Democrats, National Progressives, and Agrarians in the Parliament. Cajander's government received a vote of confidence in the July 1939 elections and his ministerialship continued.
Aimo Cajander solidified the control of leftists and centrists in the Parliament, further angering the rightists.
However, Cajander's position as Prime Minister would be severely threatened later that summer. On August 5 at 10 am, a fire broke out in Kallio, a neighborhood of Helsinki close to the Parliament House. Confusion as to the exact location and intensity of the fire – which was difficult to spot from outside – let it spread rapidly, engulfing many buildings on Second and Third Streets. The blaze grew rapidly and spread west, forcing the Parliament, then in session discussing a bill, to evacuate. The relatively densely-packed Kallio district, which was home to many factory workers, was almost entirely in flames. The Kallio church itself was barely protected, standing on the very edge of the fire, thanks to the work of the rapidly-organizing Helsinki fire brigade.
At 10:18, there was a large explosion, to the south of the fire's origin, just a block from the Presidential Palace. A huge cloud of smoke rose into the air, terrifying every resident of the city that could see it. The Presidential Palace was almost immediately evacuated as a result. At least nineteen people were killed in the blast and over fifty others wounded to varying degrees. President Kallio, hearing about the rapidly-expanding fire in the Kallio district, suspected that the whole thing was a terrorist attack. He phoned Mayor Antti Tulenheimo and asked him to place the city into a state of emergency, which he did.
The fire was mostly contained within the Kallio district and, save for the neighborhood church, managed to bring nearly every building within to fire. The fire raged and reached its peak in ferocity around noon and proceeded to die down, until it was completely extinguished around 4 pm. Around one-hundred and seventy people were killed as a result of the fire, and hundreds more wounded. Ten more people wounded in the bomb blast to the south would later die of their wounds.
The ruined Kallio district on the morning of August 6; only a few buildings remain untouched.
It was evident that both the fire and the explosion were a part of a terrorist attack on the city. The city police officially came up empty-handed after two short weeks of investigation; but what few clues they did discover linked both the fire and bomb to several former members of the Communist Party. The public went into an uproar; the Social Democrats in the Parliament were on the defensive against Progressives, National Coalition members, and even Agrarians. Many feared the events of August 5 were a communist plot to destroy the government and seize power; and a few voices, which would eventually grow in volume and number, insisted it had been carried out by agents from the Soviet Union. People demanded that the President act – as the Parliament was partially ruled by the Social Democrats. Nearly every rightist in the National Coalition and the Progressives demanded that Kallio break off ties with the Social Democrats and prepare the country for a possible communist insurgency.
Hearing of the events in Helsinki, Chancellor Wirth issued a statement decrying “foreign agents sowing chaos” in Finland, and dispatched Neurath to Helsinki to discuss the possibility of German financial and humanitarian aid to help in the rebuilding of Kallio and the treatment of the wounded civilians. Wirth stated Germany would “be Finland's first friend to help, as it was twenty years ago”[1].
In a nationally-syndicated radio broadcast on August 10, Kallio – forcefully holding back tears – declared that the perpetrators of the attacks were of “foreign arm and employment” and announced that a treaty of cooperation would be signed with Germany later that week. Finns – especially nationalists – cheered the declaration. Legislation passed the Parliament literally overnight to expand the Finnish army by two whole divisions, and funding was increased for police forces in the major cities. The next day, Cajander resigned from the position of Prime Minister; the stated reason was due to “illness and grieving over the loss of so many Finns”, but many knew that there was some form of politicking within the National Progressive leadership. Cajander's replacement was Risto Ryti, a Progressive who leaned more to the right than his predecessor, and who sought to unify the Parliament in a time of crisis.
Risto Ryti would prove to be an effective unifying force in the Finnish political scene after the Helsinki attacks.
Five days after Ryti's appointment as Prime Minister, the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Economic Assistance was brought to the Parliament; within the provisions, the Germans would provide material and financial assistance to the Finnish government. In two secret clauses, the Germans would also guarantee the country's independence from foreign invasion, and would send military supplies to help in the re-arming of the country's outdated army.
The treaty passed the Parliament with an overwhelming number of votes in favor. With this act, Finland was protected from foreign invasion (that is to say, invasion from the Soviet Union); and she was placed squarely in Germany's sphere of influence as her first assured ally. Wilhelm was most pleased: he finally had one certain ally in the great fight against the red tide of communism. He only hoped that he would have the chance to bring more countries into this fold before that fight began.
Germany assured Finland's independence in the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Economic Assistance.
[1] Germany assisted the Finnish Whites during the Civil War in 1918.
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Finland is a good ally to have, giving the Soviets a second front, if they attack.
If Finland was no surprise, Poland or Czechoslovakia will be much complicated stuff, as products of Versailles. And while Czechs insists to have 'just' their own historical borders from times of Holy Roman Empire, Poland insists on Posen and Danzig...
And so on August 10, 1938, the Axis Powers was born. Next stop is an triple alliance with Great Britain and Italy to purge Europe of the filth that is Leninist France. In the future i would also suggest an alliance with Yugoslavia, Romania, and Hungary to form a defensive pact against the USSR. One way to achieve this is to hold a Berlin Conference to sort out the territorial disputes that resulted from the Treaty of Trianon. Not only will the world once again see Germany as a nation that desires peace but the you'll gain the Balkans respect and have them want to work with you.
With Poland and Czechoslovakia i would suggest working out treaties to gain land. In exchange for the Danzig corridor you could allow Poland free trade, access to Danzig, and a independence guarantee against the Soviet Union. If you can't gain the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia then don't pursue it, while they may be German lands they never were a part of the German Empire and are not worth risking a war over.
Maybe if you're lucky Roosevelt could be convinced to side with Germany in the near future.
With Poland and Czechoslovakia i would suggest working out treaties to gain land. In exchange for the Danzig corridor you could allow Poland free trade, access to Danzig, and a independence guarantee against the Soviet Union. If you can't gain the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia then don't pursue it, while they may be German lands they never were a part of the German Empire and are not worth risking a war over.
Maybe if you're lucky Roosevelt could be convinced to side with Germany in the near future.
Hey everyone, long-overdue post here.
I appreciate all the attention, comments, and interest you have all given my AAR. I really am grateful, and it has helped me to both hone my writing style (I've improved a lot inside of a year) while also increasing my knowledge of Germany in the 1930s and German political history in general.
This AAR is not dead. What with being a GM for my own forum game in the OT Forum, to my sophomore year of college, to every other stressor and factor of life in between, I am really pressed for time. But the adventures of the re-born Second Reich (the Third Reich?) are not even close to being over.
Indeed they are. I wonder where Italy, Spain, and Japan will fall in here...
She is -- though I wouldn't necessarily say she's the strongest ally in the world.
Werth and Wilhelm have a long ways to go before they can ever hope to have a solid bloc of allies behind them -- if that even happens, anyway.
Perhaps if I'm lucky, Roosevelt will nail his geography as well (unlike historically):
I appreciate all the attention, comments, and interest you have all given my AAR. I really am grateful, and it has helped me to both hone my writing style (I've improved a lot inside of a year) while also increasing my knowledge of Germany in the 1930s and German political history in general.
This AAR is not dead. What with being a GM for my own forum game in the OT Forum, to my sophomore year of college, to every other stressor and factor of life in between, I am really pressed for time. But the adventures of the re-born Second Reich (the Third Reich?) are not even close to being over.
Indeed they are. I wonder where Italy, Spain, and Japan will fall in here...
Finland is a good ally to have, giving the Soviets a second front, if they attack.
She is -- though I wouldn't necessarily say she's the strongest ally in the world.
Werth and Wilhelm have a long ways to go before they can ever hope to have a solid bloc of allies behind them -- if that even happens, anyway.
Perhaps if I'm lucky, Roosevelt will nail his geography as well (unlike historically
):- 2
I hope that this doesn't end up being one of those AARs where the last post (before it dies) is one telling people it isn't dead.
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PART XXVIII: THE FINAL DAYS OF THE WIRTH GOVERNMENT
There was a small contingent of German society that began to grow in number in late 1939 that believed that a pan-European war – pitting the free nations of the continent and the fascists against the communists in France and the Soviet Union – was going to break out in a very short period of time. The diplomatic crisis that occurred on the Rhine border in May of that year only proved that war was inevitable, in their view. The perceived problem was exacerbated by the slow growth of the Reichswehr; a great and growing number of Nationalists refused to believe that Wirth was expanding the military at the rate needed to properly protect Germany from “the enemies of peace and a free and prosperous world” (euphemisms for the French and Soviets). After the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Economic Assistance was signed with the Finns that summer, aggressive militarism was on the rise.
Wirth and his Centrists were taken aback by the sudden dissent from the rightist members of the government coalition. Heated debates on arms spending dominated the discourse in the Reichstag in the week before Christmas that year; and on December 28, fittingly enough, the second fleet carrier of the Kaiserliche Marine, SMS Peter Strasser, was commissioned. DNVP members began loud calls for increased spending to assemble new tanks, ships, guns, and aircraft. Some even resorted to anti-Semitic rhetoric, blaming them for the crises of May and August, and making claims that Germany would be the place of “civilization's last stand against Bolshevism”.
The words rang true with a rapidly-growing number of people throughout the country, worrying the Cabinet and, especially, Wirth himself. The Chancellor was aggravated that he was being asked to do so much; the government debt had only increased since the imperial restoration, and increased spending on the Reichswehr would only exacerbate the debt problem. Spending was already through the roof – surely they could not risk spending even more that they did not have?
Chancellor Wirth was increasingly tiring from the political bickering he had to deal with, particularly coming from Hugenberg's DNVP.
That was exactly what the DNVP wanted; or, at least, that was the image that they wished to project to the rest of the country. Economic growth had grown at an almost parallel rate with the increase in military spending over the last several years, though calls from the DNVP – and the NSDAP – shouted for enormous increases in military spending, as war on the continent of Europe looked all the more likely with each day. Despite the explosion in the size of the Reichswehr since the restoration in August 1934, it simply was not enough for many of the nationalists. A minor political crisis involving purported Soviet defecting agents claiming a planned invasion of Poland eventually passed from the realm of serious considerations in the Chancellor's mind, but only heightened tensions among the populace and in the Reichstag. By February 1940, Wirth's political opponents were taking potshots at the Chancellor at every chance they could. Even several loud-mouthed DNVP members – allies in the government coalition – voiced stout opposition to the Catholic centrist's policies. On 16 February Wirth, in an audience with Wilhelm, begged permission to resign as Chancellor a force an election, but the Emperor intended on holding Wirth hostage until the next election in July.
Meanwhile, Hugenberg sparked a new crisis among chief ministers in the coalition when he suggested that the Chancellor – and therefore the Centre Party – had reneged on his promises to scale up militarization, which was perhaps the most important promise the Centrists promised the Nationalists in order to form the coalition in 1935. As the threat of a governmental collapse became very real, several of Wilhelm's advisors told him it would be best to dissolve the Reichstag rather than lose face when the coalition collapsed. Wilhelm proved indecisive in the matter, favoring an imperial proclamation dissolving the legislature one moment, and opposing it the next. As each day went by, negative press coverage of Wirth's government, particularly among right- and left-wing circles, increased sharply.
As March waned into April, Wirth took it a step further and issued a letter of resignation to Wilhelm. It proved to be at the crucial moment: after the letter was delivered, but before Wilhelm had read it, Hugenberg had announced that, by a unanimous vote of Reichstag delegates[1], the DNVP was leaving the government coalition, effectively dissolving the Reichstag and mandating new elections. Wilhelm accepted the letter of resignation and announced elections would take place on April 10. A vote by Centre delegates voted Rudolf Amelunxen, previously a regional leader of Centre Party efforts in the Rhineland, as new leader of the party in the Reichstag.
Rudolf Amelunxen, newly-elected leader of the Centrists following Wirth's resignation.
Things could not have gone better for Hugenberg, who, for the last seven years, had vied for the office of the Chancellery. The Centrists had been badly damaged by their refusal to increase military spending at the cost of the debt, and for a smaller faction's refusal to directly threaten or agitate the communist powers and other neighbors. The NSDAP's collapse and dismemberment had relegated it to an almost irrelevant status; still, after the election, they had managed to pick up two seats. The NLP had also gained seats, mostly from the Centrists, and the KPD had siphoned agitated voters away from the SPD's pool of support. It was clear that the DNVP were the winners of the election, securing their highest number of seats ever in the Reichstag, at 177. Still, Hugenberg had failed to gain a majority – which would have been an absolutely enormous electoral victory, and a knockout blow to both the SPD and Centre. The day after the election's results were tallied up and the seats apportioned, Wilhelm gave Hugenberg the time-honored task of forming a government.
The results of the April 1940 federal elections: NSDAP, 29 seats; SPD, 147 seats; KPD, 37 seats; Centre, 118 seats; NLP, 80 seats; DNVP, 177 seats.
Hugenberg, by force of personality and also by mandate, quickly won Külz's NLP as coalition partners. The Centrists would be much trickier; Amelunxen, while not having Wirth's “shaky” disposition, still wished to avoid war as a general rule of thumb. He held several meetings with all Centre delegates to the Reichstag the week after the election, where the question of whether or not to join Hugenberg's coalition was hotly debated. The right-leaning faction argued passionately to join Hugenberg in a quasi-grand coalition to prepare the country for war with communism, while the moderates of the party, de facto led by Amelunxen, refused to further stoke the fires of war. A series of votes were held on April 15, which, after six ballots, determined the fate of the Centre Party: the “intervention faction” won, and Amelunxen was forced to publicly announce his party's intentions to join Hugenberg's coalition.
With the DNVP leader's success now cemented and total, the man that had orchestrated the restoration of the Hohenzollern dynasty was now made chief legislator and head of government of the German Empire. If one thing was now for certain, it was that war, as many people had previously feared, was inevitable.
The head of state and new head of government of Germany.
[1] There are no records to verify this claim.
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