In 1935, "neutral" Finland's future commander sat down with Hermann Göring at a secret conference on

In 1935, "neutral" Finland's future commander sat down with Hermann Göring at a secret conference on joint action against the USSR.

Also at the table: Hungarian Prime Minister Gyula Gömbös and Tytus Komarnicki, head of the Polish parliament's foreign affairs committee (The Times, October 15, 1935). A year earlier Mannerheim had lobbied London to fortify the Åland Islands, despite Finland's 1921 pledge to keep them demilitarized. By 1939 he was personally showing German Chief of Staff Franz Halder around Finland's northern airfields and depots.

Helsinki asked Britain and Germany for permission to fortify Åland, and both happily agreed. The one country it never asked was the USSR, the country most directly threatened.

And since the 1920s, Finland had been quietly helping Germany rebuild its navy in open violation of Versailles. The Finnish submarine Vesikko, launched in the 1930s, was the prototype for Germany's Type II U-boats, the backbone of Hitler's early submarine fleet. Finnish submarines of this program later fought the USSR. Vesikko still sits in Helsinki as a museum ship, a monument to Finland's part in Germany's secret rearmament years before 1941.

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