Cass Series - Naval Policy - 18 - Britain, France and The Naval Arms Trade in The Baltic

BRITAIN, FRANCE AND THE NAVAL
ARMS TRADE IN THE BALTIC 1919–

1939
CASS SERIES: NAVAL POLICY AND
HISTORY
Series Editor: Geoffrey Till
ISSN 1366-9478
This series consists primarily of original manuscripts by research scholars in the general
area of naval policy and history, without national or chronological limitations. It will
from time to time also include collections of important articles as well as reprints of
classic works.
1. Austro-Hungarian Naval Policy, 1904–1914

Milan N.Vego
2. Far-Flung Lines: Studies in Imperial Defence in Honour of Donald Mackenzie

Schurman
Edited by Keith Neilson and Greg Kennedy
3. Maritime Strategy and Continental Wars

Rear Admiral Raja Menon
4. The Royal Navy and German Naval Disarmament 1942–1947

Chris Madsen
5. Naval Strategy and Operations in Narrow Seas

Milan N.Vego
6. The Pen and Ink Sailor: Charles Middleton and the King’s Navy, 1778–1813
John E.Talbott
7. The Italian Navy and Fascist Expansionism, 1935–1940

Robert Mallett
8. The Merchant Marine and International Affairs, 1850–1950

Edited by Greg Kennedy
9. Naval Strategy in Northeast Asia: Geo-strategic Goals, Policies and Prospects

Duk-Ki Kim
10. Naval Policy and Strategy in the Mediterranean Sea: Past, Present and Future
Edited by John B.Hattendorf
11. Stalin’s Ocean-going Fleet: Soviet Naval Strategy and Shipbuilding Programmes,
1935–1953
Jürgen Rohwer and Mikhail S.Monakov
12. Imperial Defence, 1868–1887

Donald Mackenzie Schurman; edited by John Beeler
13. Technology and Naval Combat in the Twentieth Century and Beyond
Edited by Phillips Payson O’Brien
14. The Royal Navy and Nuclear Weapons

Richard Moore
15. The Royal Navy and the Capital Ship in the Interwar Period: An Operational
Perspective
Joseph Moretz
16. Chinese Grand Strategy and Maritime Power

Thomas M.Kane
17. Britain’s Anti-submarine Capability, 1919–1939

George Franklin
18. Britain, France and the Naval Arms Trade in the Baltic, 1919–1939: Grand Strategy
and Failure
Donald J.Stoker
BRITAIN, FRANCE AND THE
NAVAL ARMS TRADE IN THE
BALTIC 1919–1939
Grand Strategy and Failure
Donald J.Stoker Jr
US Naval War College,
College of Distance Education, Monterey Programs Office
FRANK CASS
LONDON • PORTLAND, OR
First published in 2003 in Great Britain by FRANK CASS PUBLISHERS Crown House, 47
Chase Side, Southgate London N14 5BP
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
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and in the United States of America by FRANK CASS PUBLISHERS c/o ISBS, 920 N.E. 58th
Avenue, Suite 300 Portland, Oregon, 97213–3786
Website: http://www.frankcass.com/
Copyright © 2003 D.Stoker
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Stoker, Donald J. Britain, France and the naval arms trade in the Baltic, 1919–1939: grand
strategy and failure.—(Cass series. Naval policy and history; 18) 1. Sea Power—Great Britain—
History—20th century 2. Sea-power— France—History—20th century 3. Arms transfers 4. Great
Britain— Foreign relations—Baltic States 5. Great Britain—Foreign relations— 1910–1936 6.
France—Foreign relations—Baltic States 7. France— Foreign relations—1914–1940 8. Baltic
States—Foreign relations— Great Britain 9. Baltic States—Foreign relations—France I. Title
359′.03′0941′09042
ISBN 0-203-51964-7 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-58173-3 (Adobe e-Reader Format)

ISBN 0-7146-5319-5 (Print Edition) (cloth)
ISSN 1366-9478
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Stoker, Donald J. Britain, France and the naval arms trade in the Baltic, 1919–1939: grand
strategy and failure/Donald J.Stoker, Jr. p. cm.—(Cass series-naval policy and history, ISSN 1366-
9478; 18) Includes bibliographical reference and index. ISBN 0-7146-5319-5 (cloth) 1. Europe-
History, Naval-20th century. 2. Great Britain-Military relations-Baltic Sea Region. 3. France-
Military relations-Baltic Sea Region. 4. Baltic Sea Region-Military relations-Great Britain. 5.
Baltic Sea Region-Military relations-France. 6. Arms transfers-Europe-History-20th century. I.
Title. II. Series.
D436.S76 2003 359′.03′0947909041–dc21 20030043431
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a
retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher of this
book.
To Lyla Nabulsi and Diana Rineer
—teachers
Contents
Series Editor’s Preface ix

Acknowledgments xi
List of Abbreviations xii
Introduction 1
1 War, Intervention, and the Birth of the Successor States, 1914–19 12
2 Naval Development in the Baltic Successor States, 1918–22 21
3 Unintended Consequences: The Effects of the Washington Naval Treaties on 41
the Baltic
4 Contracts, Competition, and Corruption, 1923–25 52
5 General Kirke’s Mission to Finland, 1924–25 81
6 New Contracts, New Competition, New Corruption, 1926–32 95
7 The German Projects: Finnish Naval Development and Anglo-French 111
Failure, 1926–34
8 The Final Sales, 1933–39 129
9 The British Naval Treaties and British Abandonment, 1935–39 142
10 Grand Strategy and Failure 154
11 Conclusion 168
Select Bibliography 175

Index 188
Series Editor’s Preface
As everyone knows, navies are an instrument for politicians and diplomats to wield in
what they conceive to be the national interest, in both peace and war. Their military
functions in war are well understood and frequently analysed, but much less attention is
paid to their diplomatic function in peacetime. Much of what there is on this tends to be
focused on naval activities that are aimed at powerful adversaries and are intended to be
frankly coercive. It may be either a question of compelling an adversary to do something,
or perhaps of deterring them from some unwanted act. Indeed, we see ample evidence of
this kind of naval coercion in the Gulf and the Arabian Sea in the early twenty-first
Century.
By contrast, however, much less attention is paid to the business of coalition-building
through naval diplomacy, an activity which has become an avowed function of modern
navies. Coalition-building can be conducted by a wide variety of means, including port
visits, combined exercises of varying sizes and levels of ambition and complexity, staff
college exchanges, training programmes, naval agreements and cooperation in the
procurement of naval platforms, weapons and sensors.
In this book, Donald Stoker provides us with a detailed analysis of a particular case
study of naval coalition-building through the naval arms trade that has been almost
completely forgotten. He explores the thinking behind the British and French campaign
to build an enduring relationship with Poland and the newly independent Baltic republics
through the provision of advice and naval equipment in the period between the First and
Second World Wars. This is obviously a historical topic with much contemporary
relevance.
Stoker shows that the prime motives of both the French and the British naval
coalition-building effort were partly to help create a cordon sanitaire to the east of
Germany that would produce a security architecture conducive to future security in the
area, partly to outdo each other, and partly, perhaps mainly, to make money. The French
were much more committed to all of these aims than were the British, and the British
Admiralty in particular was generally unsympathetic to the notion that the naval arms
trade should be used in this way.
Poland and the Baltic republics showed the qualities characteristic of leaders of new
states developing navies from scratch: a general lack of maritime experience and
consequent inability to understand what they needed; maritime priorities that were quite
low in comparison with other pressing issues; debilitating levels of administrative
incompetence and corruption; and an over-reliance on the shady individuals and
adventurers sometimes encountered in the murky arms-trade world. The aspiring arms
sellers themselves were muddled in their own priorities and unclear as to whether they
were they were using political means to achieve economic objectives or the other way
about.
The result was failure at every level. The locals did not manage to acquire navies of
any material consequence in averting or escaping the great crisis of 1939–40 that was to
lead to a strategic catastrophe for them all. The British and French failed to locate and
develop a worthwhile naval market for themselves, or to help create a stable security
system in the Baltic that would deter Germany and Russia from engaging in reckless
policies leading to war. The experience shows how difficult naval coalition-building can
be, especially when the protagonists are not clear about what their aims are. In today’s
circumstances, there may well be useful lessons in this meticulous review of the British
and French approach to the naval arms trade in the Baltic between 1919 and 1939.
Geoffrey Till
Series Editor
Acknowledgments
A project such as this reaches fruition only with the help of a great number of people. It
began as a doctoral dissertation directed by Paul G.Halpern at Florida State University.
Jan K.Tanenbaum, Jonathan A.Grant, Edward D.Wynot, and Morton Winsberg also sat
on the committee, and I thank all of them for their direction and support.
For research assistance I am grateful to the following: the staffs of the Public Record
Office, Service Historique de la Marine, Liddell Hart Centre, Finnish Military Library,
Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, the US National Archives, the Auswärtiges Amt in
Berlin, Roderick Suddaby, Paul Kemp and the staff of the Imperial War Museum, Andrez
Suchon of the Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum, Ilka Korhonen and the staff of the
Finnish Military Archives. Additionally, John Dunn of Valdosta State University
furnished material from his research on Poland, and Reet Nuber, of the Estonian Ministry
of Defence, provided the photograph for the jacket. The late Commodore Erik Wihtol of
the Finnish Navy answered innumerable questions from a puzzled American and was
generous enough to provide some important research materials. Doug Porch lent me
numerous books from his collection and answered many questions on France. Annette
Forsén, Björn Forsén, Esa Sundbäck, Julien Gueslin, and Louis Clerc provided me with
copies of their respective works on the Baltic.
The Kennan Institute for Advance Russian Studies kindly funded my research in
Washington, DC. Several people provided generous help with translations: Hege Carlson,
Janina Jadrych, and Michael Jasinski. My marvelous friends Gerard and Jackie Margolis
provided a room in their apartment in Paris to a poor graduate student.
At Florida State University, Debbie Perry and Ann Marsh assisted in innumerable
ways. I extend my special thanks to Anne Spangler and Dusty Matthews, and the other
geniuses of the Interlibrary Loan Department at Florida State University. I could not have
done the research without them.
The following read all or part of the manuscript and offered wonderful advice and
corrections: Annette Forsén, Björn Forsén, Kenneth Hagan, George Maude, Esa
Sundbäck, Geoffrey Till, and Erik Wihtol. I am also grateful to the US Naval War
College’s College of Distance Education for the time to complete this project.
Particularly important were Vice-Admiral Arthur K.Cebrowski, Rear-Admiral Rodney
P.Rempt, Charlie Niemeyer, John Jackson, Tim Jackson, Doug Smith, Stan Carpenter,
Fred Drake, and Hal Blanton.
Finally, I would like to thank my parents and brothers for their support and my wife
Carol for putting up with someone who spends so much time in a region so far away. Any
mistakes are my own.
Abbreviations
AA Auswärtiges Amt
AGNA Anglo-German Naval Agreement
AMAE Archives du Ministère des Affaires Etrangères
BDFA British Documents on Foreign Affairs
CMB coastal motor boat
DBFP Documents on British Foreign Policy
DDMI Deputy Director of Military Intelligence
DMI Director of Military Intelligence
DNI Director of Naval Intelligence
DRC Defence Requirements Committee
FMA Finnish Military Archives
FO Foreign Office
IABS Record Relating to the Internal Affairs of the Baltic States
IAL Records Relating to the Internal Affairs of Latvia
LHC Liddell Hart Centre
NA National Archives
MA military attaché
MAE Le Ministre des Affaires Etrangères
MM Le Ministre de la Marine
MSF Correspondence of the Military Intelligence Division
Relating to General, Political, Economic, and Military
Conditions in Scandinavia and Finland
MTB motor torpedo boat
n.d. not dated
PBS Correspondence of the Military Intelligence Division
Relating to General Political, Economic, and Military
Conditions in Poland and the Baltic States
PISM Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum
PP Personal Papers
PRF Records of the Department of State Relating to Political
Relations Between Finland and Other States
PRA Puolustusrevisionin Arkisto
PRO Public Record Office
SHM Service Historique de la Marine
s.i. signature illegible
SNO Senior Naval Officer
WO War Office
The dates of cited documents have been translated into English.

Introduction
‘It felt like the whole peninsula would turn over’,1 so commented a Polish veteran of the
opening salvos of the First World War. The Nazi war in Europe began on 1 September
1939 when the pre-dreadnought battleship Schelswig-Holstein shelled the Polish
fortifications on the Westerplatte. Few realize that the conflict’s initial blows fell in the
Baltic Sea. Fewer still know that a warship delivered them.
The outbreak of the Second World War in Eastern Europe marked the failure of the
interwar grand strategies of both France and Great Britain. From the end of the First
World War, both of these nations had pursued a variety of paths, some antagonistic, some
similar, in their respective efforts to prevent the war that began in the autumn of 1939.
Moreover, the war’s onset marked the failure of one of the key elements of Anglo-
French policy in the Baltic: the cordon sanitaire. Britain and France strove to use the
nations emerging from the shattered Austrian, German, and Russian Empires as weights
against German power. With Lenin’s Revolution came the additional goal of keeping
Germany and Russia separate.2 Poland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, were five
of the new nations that benefited from this policy.
The new war also marked the failure of Britain and France to achieve their economic
goals in the Baltic. Throughout the interwar period both powers struggled to build their
own influence, while undermining that of the other, in order to gain a stronger position in
the region’s markets. Both used naval and military missions as policy tools. The naval
missions, our primary concern, played a number of roles. Obviously, they advised the
developing naval forces, but their most important function became securing arms
contracts in the often-misplaced hope of furthering economic influence.
The outbreak of war also signaled an end to two decades of military preparation in the
five new or reborn states of the Baltic. Poland, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia all
built military forces that they hoped would deter invasion. These defenses, except
perhaps in the case of the Poles, were primarily directed against the Soviet Union, the
power which all had fought for their independence. These five states launched naval
defense programs integrating warships, coastal fortifications, and aircraft. Much of the
needed military equipment had to come from abroad, especially technically complex
items such as warships.
The need to defend their respective coastlines from hostile descents, coupled with the
necessity of dealing with foreign contractors to secure warships, produced an intense
contest for the orders among the major European, and sometimes US and Japanese arms
suppliers. Britain and France were the most persistent competitors, and many of their
military, diplomatic, and civilian personnel proved willing to go to extraordinary ends to
obtain the naval armaments orders of the eastern Baltic.
Examining the naval arms trade sheds new light on the economic, political, and
military aspects of interwar British and French grand strategy. Winning the orders
became important to the economic health of both nations, but they also believed other
benefits fell to the power winning the bids. To the British and French navies, selling
Britain, france and the naval arms trade in the baltic 1919–1939 2
warships became a means of propping up their respective naval industries. To the British
and the French governments, and their naval leaders as well, sales meant influence. And
influence meant control. And control meant more orders. But this assumption proved as
wrong as much of British and French thinking between the wars.
The underlying reasons for the intense British and French interest reveal much about
their interwar goals and fears. Often, they did not pursue sales to strengthen their
respective regional military positions, nor did they necessarily seek to improve the
military capabilities of the states of the eastern Baltic. Indeed, the French, as well as the
Poles, sometimes accused the British of working to hinder naval development in the area,
a charge echoed by others. Generally, the British and French maneuvered for the
contracts not merely because of economic self-interest, but as a means of fulfilling their
quest for diplomatic, and more importantly, economic dominance. Each worked
desperately to increase its own influence and limit the growth of its rival’s influence so as
to gain additional sales. Military necessity rarely played a part. For example, a British
officer, who unofficially offered advice on coastal defense to the Lithuanian government,
was chastised by his superiors for doing so.3 Moreover, examining naval development
through the twin lenses of naval missions and the naval arms trade presents a microcosm
that illuminates larger British and French actions, thereby contributing to a better
understanding of the overall failure of French and British grand strategy between the
wars.
It is equally important to consider the roles of the small states in this process. They
were independent actors pursuing their own policy goals and security needs. Sometimes,
they seized upon opportunities arising from intense French and British interests and
worked to mold the policies of the Great Powers to their own ends. The British and
French, who saw these small states as tools for pursuing their own objectives—easily
manipulated ones—generally forgot that small nations have their own goals. They did not
view them as equals, nor as nations exercising an independent will. They were merely
markets and, occasionally, supplemental defense forces. As much as possible, the side of
the smaller powers is presented as well.
FRENCH AND BRITISH GRAND STRATEGY
In some respects the immediate post-First World War situations of Great Britain and
France were quite similar. Both were victorious powers, tired from a long war, and eager
to preserve the postwar status quo. Both wanted security, the preservation of their
empires, and a rapid recovery of prewar trade. Though they had the same goals, how each
power believed these should be achieved produced tension, and the biggest bone of
contention was the issue of security.
France
In the period between the wars little mattered as much to French leaders of all political
persuasions as security against a future German attack. After the First World War, the
French High Command was convinced, correctly, that Germany had not accepted defeat.
A powerful political figure, Raymond Poincaré, was ‘ever fearful of a revival of German
Introduction 3
military power’. These attitudes were far from unusual, and motivated French leaders to
devote the nation’s political, economic, diplomatic, and military resources to the pursuit
of security. The firm belief that the next war would be a long one underpinned France’s
grand strategy.4
The stark reality of France’s weakness in comparison to Germany shaded the actions
of France’s statesmen and strategists. Demographically, Germany’s heavyweight status
overpowered France. Moreover, the bulk of France’s industrial capacity and mineral
resources lay on the German border, making it vulnerable in the event of an attack.
German industrial potential also outstripped that of France.5
This awareness of French weakness in such important measures of industrial strength,
joined with the ‘long war’ belief. These factors, in turn, combined with the experience of
the First World War, producing by the early 1920s French awareness of the need to
mobilize all of the nation’s resources to fight the next war. France’s empire remained one
of the sources of this strength, and ensuring the continuous flow of men and material
from French possessions became one of the primary tasks of the French Navy.6
The First World War also proved to France that it could not win the next war without
allies. After Georges Clemenceau bargained away the security demands of the French
military by giving way on the issue of the Rhineland’s separation from Germany, a
concession made in return for an Anglo-American alliance that France never received,
the military searched for a way to fulfill what became one of the primary tenets of
France’s interwar strategy: not to fight on French territory. Moreover, to replace Russia,
which had collapsed into revolution, civil war, and then worst of all, Bolshevism,
Marshal Ferdinand Foch looked to the new states. The politicians agreed with the army,
and moved even more quickly than the marshal preferred to pull Poland into an alliance.
Belgium and Czechoslovakia became part of the numbers game of adding divisions to the
French Army, and on 29 July 1920, Foch eagerly signed a military accord (not an
alliance) with Belgium.7 Later, the Little Entente would also find itself counted among
France’s counterweights to German strength.
The French Foreign Ministry played a key role in France’s grand strategy. Its
representatives sought to win as much support from allies as possible, and ultimately, to
prevent war from breaking out. France’s alliance building was most active under
governments that pursued a more independent foreign policy. In 1920–21, Alexandre
Millerand, first as Prime Minister, and then as President, worked to break France’s
strategic dependence upon Great Britain. Key to this was Millerand’s sincere, but failed
effort at economic cooperation and rapprochement with Germany, while seeking to
uphold the elements of the Versailles Treaty that best served French interests. Under his
watch France signed the aforementioned 1920 military accord with Belgium and a 1921
alliance with Poland.8
The French Army’s war plans during the 1920s assumed the active participation of
France’s Eastern and Central European allies in a war with Germany. In the early 1920s,
Foch had offensive plans for attacks into Germany from the areas of French occupation in
the Rhineland. Negotiations produced the 1924 French alliance treaty with Prague, as
well as the construction of the Little Entente. These agreements never coalesced into the
strong front that many French leaders craved, and were sometimes little more than
bilateral pacts.9
French military and diplomatic interests in Eastern and Central Europe supported
France’s security goals, but the Baltic was also critical as a market for French goods, and
as a source of strength and material. France’s conduct of the arms trade, particularly with
its ally Poland, shows French priorities for the region, and contributes to the overall
picture of French grand strategy between the wars. Soon, economic considerations began
to take precedence over all others.
In general, France worked hard at using its political position to win economic
advantages with its allies. Indeed, one of the primary tasks of French military and
diplomatic representatives in the Baltic was to do just this. Generally, the diplomats laid
the foundations for French arms sales to help French industrial concerns, thereby
contributing to France’s economic growth.10 In the Baltic region between the wars, arms
sales were a means of pursuing the nation’s diplomatic, military, and economic
objectives.
Great Britain
Britain also pursued a grand strategy with the objective of national security, but did not
feel as threatened by Germany as France. This is easily understood because the surrender
of the German fleet as an element of the Versailles settlement, as well as the treaty’s
strictures upon German naval development, removed Germany’s immediate means of
attacking Great Britain. Moreover, the general results of the war left the British in an
apparently strong position vis-à-vis its traditional rivals of late, Germany and Russia. To
ensure its security, Great Britain strove to maintain the traditional balance of power.
Moreover, the British sought to prevent a hostile power from controlling the Low
Countries and the ports along the English Channel.11 In British eyes, failure to
accomplish these objectives would result in grave threats to Britain’s security.
Additionally, Britain desired a quick resurrection of international trade, particularly with
their largest, pre-war partner—Germany.
In the immediate post-First World War period, the Versailles Treaty did not produce
the postwar stability for which people hoped. Instead, it quickly produced tensions
between Britain and France. Immediately after its signature, voices in Britain saw
Versailles as unworkable and called for its revision. The French insisted that only the
maintenance of all of the treaty’s provisions could keep France secure.12 Britain read
aggression, arrogance, and intransigence into France’s pursuit of policies intended to
protect the declining strategic position of Paris.
In 1919, the British government told its service departments to begin planning on the
assumption that Britain would not be involved in a major war within the next ten years.
By the end of Stanley Baldwin’s second government in 1929, the ‘Ten-Year Rule’, as it
came to be called, had become institutionalized as a measure for assessing the nation’s
risk of war. It was to be carried over into each successive year until the government said
otherwise.13
In the 1920s, imperial defense dominated Britain’s strategic concerns. The political
leadership saw the Soviet Union as the primary opponent. The British though,
particularly the Royal Navy, did not neglect war planning against such powerful potential
opponents as Japan, and of course, the United States. Unlike its government, the Royal
Navy saw Japan as the most likely future enemy. Generally, the British abandoned any
Introduction 5
idea of a continental commitment like that of the First World War, echoing the
isolationist call of public opinion.14
Militarily, the Royal Navy was expected to bear the brunt of Britain’s defense
responsibilities, and therefore received the bulk of the money allotted to the armed forces,
at least in the 1920s. Sea power played the dominant role in British strategic planning and
the navy was seen as a way of exerting economic pressure on the enemy, as well as the
means of protecting British trade. Moreover, the navy planned to conduct a guerre de
course against an enemy, attacking the opponent’s trade routes, ‘while avoiding action
with superior forces’.15
In the initial postwar period the strategic thinking of the army mattered very little
because Britain effectively disarmed in regard to its land forces. Ironically, as it did so,
the army’s commitments increased because of the expansion of the empire and civil
unrest in places such as Ireland and the Middle East (a situation not unlike that faced by
the US military since the end of the Cold War). The army believed its next likely and
significant wartime task would be fighting the Soviet Union, particularly in the defense of
India. The Foreign Office, at least in the 1920s, agreed.16
The RAF faired a little better than the army, though its ideas on the dangers to Britain
bordered on the surreal. The RAF saw French air power, and its superiority over Great
Britain’s, as the threat against which London had to prepare.17 The government also
expected the Royal Air Force (RAF) to work with the army in garrisoning the empire.18
The pursuit of disarmament became a critical element of British grand strategy. After
the First World War, many of Britain’s leaders were convinced that armaments were a
direct cause of war and therefore came to the conclusion that reducing weapons would
produce security. Moreover, the British believed that victory in the First World War had
assured Britain’s safety, thus enabling the pursuit of disarmament as a policy. The French
took the opposite view, believing that insecurity produced the need for nations to have
sufficient armaments to defend themselves from aggressors.19
Britain’s gutting of its defense forces contributed to tensions between the two powers,
for British military weakness injured France’s strategic position in regard to Germany.
And France believed it needed to be strong against Germany because the French knew
the Germans would have to be forced to keep the provisions of Versailles. Consistently,
tensions over Germany kept the two powers at logger-heads, with Britain never realizing
that France’s primary objective was not hegemony, but security. After 1922, and the
collapse of David Lloyd George’s government, most British leaders had little interest in
strategic matters until the 1930s.20
Overall, Britain’s grand strategic thinking was not nearly as clear as that of France.
The prime reason for this was that the French had the proverbial 800 pound revisionist
gorilla on their doorstep, and the British did not. But there was something upon which
both powers did agree: the necessity of maintaining and expanding their own economic
strength. In this respect, the immediate postwar government of David Lloyd George
provided much clearer direction. Lloyd George wanted the economy back on track, and
had few qualms about making drastic reductions in defense spending as one means of
doing so.21 The French certainly cut spending from its wartime heights, but not to the
extremes found in Great Britain.
Slashing government spending was seen as one method of improving economic
strength, but nothing was viewed as being better than the expansion of foreign trade. The
defeat of the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires as a result of the First World War,
and the collapse of Russia into revolution, and eventually, civil war, created great
opportunities in Eastern and Central Europe for the growth of French and British
commerce. Both powers eyed the region eagerly, but before they could benefit from it,
they had to secure it. And from this desire arose the cordon sanitaire.
THE CREATION OF THE CORDON SANITAIRE
In the aftermath of the Great War, Britain, France, and the other Entente powers became
involved in the independence struggles of the new nations of Central and Eastern Europe.
In some respects, Britain and France pursued this policy out of sympathy for the former
subject peoples of the disintegrating Romanov, Hohenzollern, and Habsburg Empires.
Self-interest, though, soon proved a stronger driving force than any esoteric emotional
attachment. Great Britain, but more particularly France, hoped to create among these new
and reborn nations a group of states that would offset any future resurgence of German
military power.22
Strategic considerations drove the initial horse of Anglo-French involvement, but the
cart coming behind was a desire for increased economic penetration of the region. The
French wanted to forestall what they saw as growing British economic influence, while
Great Britain sought to replace markets lost during the First World War. In general, the
British viewed France as a rival in the region, and ‘until the mid-1920s, the British
considered French ambitions the most immediate threat to Baltic stability’.23
The overall French strategy for the region arose from France’s First World War search
to replace its former ally, Russia. Initially, France sought to construct a barrier from the
emerging states of East and Central Europe. The outline of the plan, centering initially
upon Poland, was drawn up in January 1918. Even during the idea’s initial gestation,
Poland took center stage in France’s effort to prevent German expansion. After the
October Revolution, Romania, Finland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Estonia also
became part of the French plan, but Poland remained France’s primary tool for containing
Germany in the east. And after the war, the French meant the Poles to play Russia’s pre-
First World War alliance role.24
Even while pursuing France’s strategic goals in Eastern Europe, the French Foreign
Ministry remained keenly aware of the economic opportunities of an Eastern European
alliance. But while France was still locked in its terrible struggle with Germany,
economic objectives did not override strategic and political concerns. When peace came,
this changed, and the driving force behind the French government’s interest in the region
became economic.25 As Europe moved farther from the end of the war, France, in the
conduct of its policies in the area, increasingly placed its economic needs above strategic
concerns, and alienated allies and potential friends in the course of doing so.
The British also had strategic interests in the Baltic. To London, at least initially,
German influence, political as well as economic, was the threat. They wanted to eliminate
German influence and supported the new states, militarily and financially, in an effort to
do so. The British also sought the maintenance of the balance of power in the region,
while realizing that the area had an economic significance in the event of a future
European war.26
Introduction 7
The October Revolution upset many of the plans that French and British policymakers
had for the Baltic, and altered their political goals for Eastern Europe. Clemenceau feared
that Bolshevism would make the nations of Eastern Europe useless as replacements for
Russia in France’s alliance strategy, and pushed for the transformation of what had been
a barrier of states into a cordon sanitaire between Germany and Lenin’s Russia. France’s
regional goals expanded to include the containment of Bolshevism, as well as of
Germany. Moreover, the creation of the barrier was a means of retaining the benefits of
victory, which it was feared would be lost if Germany and Russia established an alliance,
or Bolshevism spread to Germany.27 Indeed, Clemenceau had reason to worry. Weimar
and Lenin’s regime held their first military conversations in 1919.
The British also supported the policy of keeping the two pariah nations apart. They
also worried about the spread of Bolshevism, particularly to countries that were the
largest British markets, such as Germany. The British fear of Bolshevism decreased as
the Russian Civil War wound down, and the Anglo-Soviet trade agreement of 1921
further reduced London’s fears. Clearly, even at this early date, British economic
interests drove their regional diplomatic goals, and would soon underpin Britain’s
military ones as well. The Foreign Office ‘defined Britain’s aim in the Baltic in 1920 as
the attaining of commercial supremacy’. And as the decade wore on, trade became the
‘defining principle’ in Britain’s Baltic policy.28
The French, for their part, also quickly began using the system for economic
aggrandizement. The French intended Poland to play the central role in the construction
of a cordon sanitaire of states between Germany and Russia, as well as in their overall
strategy of alliance building. But the French Foreign Ministry had plans for Poland
beyond those of the military leadership. France saw economic opportunities and the
Foreign Ministry supported ‘the idea of taking advantage of Poland’s position as a
petitioner to secure France’s economic interests’. The French also did not shrink from
using the alliance signed with Poland in February 1921 to extract beneficial oil and other
commercial agreements from the Poles. Clearly, France’s policy developed an
overwhelmingly economic emphasis.29
But the Poles had an advantage of which they were not yet aware: other nations
needed their markets, particularly Great Britain. Immediately after the war, Poland, as
well as Finland and the three Baltic states, became important to British trade. Britain’s
efforts to gain economic influence in Poland convinced Clemenceau to quickly grant the
Poles a 4,600,000 franc loan in April 1919.30 Later, when the states of the eastern Baltic
began to realize how badly the other nations wanted their business, it would open up
opportunities for the small powers to attempt to manipulate and cajole the larger states.
Thus the Baltic became more important in the economic contest than in the political
one, particularly in British eyes, but only slightly less so in those of the French. In
adopting this orientation, both the British and French missed the point. In the future,
when the Germans recovered, they waged a political struggle for influence in the region,
with economics being a tool. After the stabilization of the area, the British and French
prosecuted an economic struggle for the Baltic, using politics as a tool. Politics trumps
economics. Britain and France did not figure this out until the late 1930s, after it was too
late.
NAVAL ARMAMENTS AND THE CORDON SANITAIRE
Early fears about Germany and Lenin’s Russia led both Britain and France to begin
arming, in at least a limited fashion, the new states of the Baltic. During the initial period
of instability after the First World War, Poland and the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia,
and Lithuania received small arms and other military equipment from Great Britain and
France, sometimes without charge, sometimes on a barter basis. When the immediate
threat from Lenin’s Russia, and adventurers such as Colonel P.M.Bermondt-Avalov and
Count Rüdiger von der Goltz had passed, all of the nations of the eastern Baltic began to
reorganize their military forces and embark upon efforts to strengthen them. To do this,
these states required modern military equipment, most of which could only come from
foreign firms. Part of the armament programs of all the nations of the eastern Baltic
included some expenditure for maritime defense. When it became known in Great
Britain, France, and the other industrial powers that the various new states intended to
create small, but modern naval forces, the news did not provoke Anglo-French
cooperation in an effort to strengthen the nations that Britain and France had helped
create, but intense competition. Examining the Anglo-French struggle for the naval
contracts demonstrates how the two powers conducted policy in the region between the
wars, and also explains their motivations.31
A hallmark of their rivalry was the constant effort each exerted to undermine the
influence of the other, and to discredit its opponent in the eyes of the various small states.
This served not to strengthen, but to weaken the very security system that Britain and
France had created.
GREAT POWER INTERESTS
As these small states built their respective navies during the interwar period, political and
economic circumstances forced them to deal with the major powers. From this
relationship a question arises: in what were the Great Powers more interested, security,
naval limitation, or the profit, both economic and diplomatic, that they stood to gain from
naval sales to these small nations? All of these factors influenced their involvement, and
were key to the respective grand strategies pursued by Britain and France. But during the
interwar years economic interest, in its various forms, became the primary concern
motivating both London and Paris.
Important, indeed critical, in the matter of sales was the issue of influence. France and
Great Britain competed for contracts, as well as influence in these five states. Each
sought to win orders and to place naval and military advisors in the nations of the eastern
Baltic as a means of affecting further arms purchases and creating an atmosphere
sympathetic to the business needs of the firms of their respective nations. Here, military
and naval missions played critical roles. French strategy in particular relied upon them.32
The British would also use missions, and compete with the French, often successfully, to
place them in the various states.
For Britain and France, the eastern Baltic during the interwar years was an economic
battleground where each sought to expand its share of the region’s foreign trade, at the
other’s expense. Generally, the French lost to the British. During the interwar period
Introduction 9
goods from Great Britain accounted for from about 20 percent to 40 percent of the import
trade of Estonia, Finland, and Poland. Germany dominated the import trade of the nations
for which Britain was not the primary trading partner, Lithuania and Latvia for example.
France never supplied more than 10 percent of the yearly imports of any nation in the
eastern Baltic, even to its ally Poland. Moreover, the French rarely captured more than a
5 percent share of the annual import market, and 2 percent was average in Latvia,
Estonia, and Finland in the decades between the wars.33 Yet, France managed to win a
significant portion of the naval arms orders, especially in Poland and Latvia. Did the
French manage to establish relationships that furthered the sale of their weapons? What
was the connection, if any, between influence and sales? Was it symbiotic, or parasitical,
or perhaps something completely different? Hopefully, this work can provide some
answers.
There exists among many the assumption that arms sales inexorably lead to conflict,
while the creation of systems of collective security contribute to the prevention of war.
But, is it proper to always draw these conclusions? Perhaps the reality is different from
the ‘conventional wisdom’. Kalervo Hovi writes that
France’s new Eastern European alliance policy constituted, in conjunction

with the Versailles peace arrangements, the most efficient security system
in Europe between the two world wars, and the most significant example
of the continuity of a policy of the balance of power on the basis of
European alliance systems.34
Hovi’s contention regarding efficiency may indeed be correct, at least in the sense that
the post-First World War system constructed by the Allies had the potential to be a very
efficient security system. This efficiency could in no way be realized unless France and
Great Britain, the two major powers connected to its creation, were willing to support it.
One can see in the manner in which the two nations conducted policy in the region a
marked unwillingness, and sometimes, inability to back their own creation, particularly
by the 1930s, when support became increasingly critical. France and Great Britain had
the opportunity and ability to provide these nations with sufficient armaments, and still
make a profit. They armed and advised them sometimes, but the inefficient, shortsighted,
and often corrupt manner in which the public and private individuals involved conducted
themselves injured the military and political positions of the states of the eastern Baltic,
and by this, those of France and Britain as well. Competent and cooperative action on the
part of the British and French might have produced a stronger and more effective cordon
sanitaire.
Collective security arrangements do not inevitably produce peace. No system of
security is successful if its members are not willing to support it. The will to participate in
defense must exist; intention is never enough.
NOTES
1. Franciszek Bartoszek, telephone interview by John Dunn, Sandra Pilatowski, translator, 29
Aug. 1979, author’s collection.
2. Kalervo Hovi, Cordon Sanitaire or Barrière de l’Est? The Emergence of the New French
Eastern European Alliance Policy 1917–1919 (Turku, 1975), 12; Hovi, Alliance de Revers:
Stabilization of France’s Alliance Policies in East Central Europe 1919–1921 (Turku,

1984), 68–9.
3. Preston to Riga, 2 July 1935, Public Record Office, London, Foreign Office (henceforth FO)
371/19402; Muirhead-Gould to Director of Naval Intelligence (DNI), 8 July 1935, ibid.
4. Robert Doughty, ‘The French Armed Forces, 1918–40’, in Allan R.Millet and Williamson
Murray (eds), Military Effectiveness: The Interwar Period (Boston, MA: Unwin Hyman,
1988), p. 40; Henry Dutailly, Les problèmes de l’armée de Terre française (1933–1939)
(Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1980), p. 39; Richard D.Challener, ‘The French Foreign
Office: The Era of Philippe Berthelot’, in Gordon A.Craig and Felix Gilbert (eds), The
Diplomats, 1919–1939 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1953), p. 49; Robert
J.Young, ‘La Guerre de Longue Durée: Some Reflections on French Strategy and Diplomacy
in the 1930s’, in Adrian Preston (ed.), General Staffs and Diplomacy Before the Second
World War (London: Croom Helm, 1978), p. 42.
5. Young, ‘La Guerre’, pp. 43–4; Douglas Porch, ‘Arms and Alliances: French Grand Strategy
and Policy in 1914–1940’, in Paul Kennedy (ed.), Grand Strategies in War and Peace (New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991), p. 134.
6. Judith M.Hughes, To the Maginot Line: The Politics of French Military Preparation in the
1920’s (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), p. 57; Doughty, ‘French Armed
Forces’, p. 47.
7. Porch, ‘Arms and Alliances’, pp. 135–6; Nicole Jordan, ‘Maurice Gamelin, Italy and the
Eastern Alliances’, Journal of Strategic Studies 4 (Dec. 1991), 429; Hughes, Maginot Line,
pp. 59, 64, 66–7; Dutailly, Les problèmes, p. 39.
8. Young, ‘La Guerre’, pp. 49–50; Olavi Hovi, ‘Security before Disarmament, or Hegemony?
The French Alliance Policy 1917–1927’, in R.Ahmann et al. (eds), The Quest for Stability:
Problems of West European Security 1918–1957 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), p.
120; Dutailly, Les problèmes, p. 40.
9. Hughes, Maginot Line, pp. 192–3; Doughty, ‘French Armed Forces’, p. 49; Hovi, ‘Security
before Disarmament’, p. 124; Young, ‘La Guerre’, pp. 52–3; Dutailly, Les problèmes, p. 40.
10. Hovi, ‘Security before Disarmament’, p. 125; Edward A.Kolodziej, Making and Marketing
Arms: The French Experience and its Implications for the International System (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), p. xiv.
11. Raymond J.Sontag, A Broken World, 1919–1939 (New York, 1971), pp. 19–20; Brian Bond,
British Military Policy Between the World Wars (Oxford: Clarendon, 1980), p. 75.
12. Sontag, Broken World, pp. 22–4.
13. David Dilks, ‘“The Unnecessary War”? Military Advice and Foreign Policy in Great
Britain, 1931–39’, in Adrian Preston (ed.), General Staffs and Diplomacy Before the Second
World War (London: Croom Helm, 1978), p. 104; David Thomson, England in the
Twentieth Century, 1914–1963 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965), p. 289.
14. Brian Bond and Williamson Murray, ‘The British Armed Forces, 1918–1939’, in Millet and
Murray (eds), Military Effectiveness, p. 99; Michael Howard, The Continental Commitment:
The Dilemma of British Defence Policy in the Era of Two World Wars (London: Temple
Smith, 1972), p. 90; Sontag, Broken World, pp. 21–2.
15. Christopher Bell, The Royal Navy, Seapower, and Strategy Between the Wars (Stanford,
CA: Stanford University Press, 2000), p. 184.
16. P.Towle, ‘British Security and Disarmament Policy in Europe in the 1920s’, in Ahmann et
al. (eds), The Quest for Stability, p. 129; Howard, Continental Commitment, pp. 76–7, 90;
Bond, British Military Policy, pp. 10–22.
17. Hines H.Hall III, ‘British Air Defense and Anglo-French Relations, 1921–1924’, Journal of
Strategic Studies 3 (Sept. 1981), 271; Howard, Continental Commitment, p. 90.
18. Bond, British Military Policy, pp. 24–5.
19. Maurice Vaïsse, ‘Security and Disarmament: Problems in the Development of the
Disarmament Debates, 1919–1934’, in Ahmann et al (eds), The Quest for Stability, p. 180.
Introduction 11
20. Towle, ‘British Security’, pp. 100, 145; Bond, British Military Policy, p. 12; Hovi, ‘Security
before Disarmament’, p. 116.
21. Howard, Continental Commitment, p. 78.
22. Hovi, Cordon Sanitaire, p. 12; Hovi, Alliance, pp. 68–9.
23. Hovi, Alliance, pp. 68–9; Esa Sundbäck, ‘Finland in British Baltic Policy: British Political
and Economic Interests Regarding Finland in the Aftermath of the First World War, 1918–
1925’ (PhD diss., Turku University, 2000), pp. 47–8, 58.
24. Hovi, Cordon Sanitaire, pp. 75, 78–9, 82, 96, 133–4.
25. Ibid., p. 135; Hovi, Alliance, p. 67.
26. Olavi Hovi, The Baltic Area in British Policy, 1918–1921 (Helsinki: Studia Historica, 1980),
p. 49; Sundbäck, ‘Finland in British Baltic Policy’, pp. 28–9, 43.
27. Hovi, Cordon Sanitaire, pp. 149, 155.
28. Sundbäck, ‘Finland in British Baltic Policy’, pp. 142, 146, 249, 260, 264.
29. Hovi, Alliance, pp. 85, 81, 125.
30. Hovi, Baltic Area, pp. 105–6; Hovi, Cordon Sanitaire, p. 194.
31. Hovi, Alliance, pp. 67–9.
32. Hovi, Cordon Sanitaire, p. 213.
33. League of Nations, Economic Intelligence Service, Europe’s Trade: A Study of the Trade of
European Countries with Each Other and with the Rest of the World (Geneva: League of
Nations, 1941), pp. 49, 52; also, International Trade Statistics, 1938 (Geneva: League of
Nations, 1939), pp. 105, 113, 166, 170, 215; Fred Singleton, The Economy of Finland in the
Twentieth Century (Bradford: University of Bradford, 1988), p. 60.
34. Hovi, Cordon Sanitaire, p. 12.
1
War, Intervention, and the Birth of the
Successor States, 1914–19
INTRODUCTION
British and French policymakers had similar objectives in the post-First World War
Baltic: peace, a stable barrier separating Germany and Russia, fertile ground for the
pursuit of economic interests—and the undermining of the other’s influence as a path to
market dominance. Additionally, the British sought to maintain their version of the
balance of power in the region, while the French strove to support their strategy of
encircling Germany. To the French, Poland was the linchpin of their security planning for
all of Eastern Europe. But before the businessmen could come safely swarming to the
region, it had to become politically stable. The First World War not only bequeathed
tenuous independence to the peoples of the Baltic littoral, but also chaos.
THE FIRST WORLD WAR AND ALLIED INTERVENTION IN THE

BALTIC
Geographic factors heavily impact naval operations in the Baltic and the development of
the region’s naval forces. The sea’s average depth is 221 feet, making mine warfare very
effective. Its shallowness limits the diving range of submarines and makes it easier for air
and surface units to spot them. There is also no noticeable tide. The Baltic’s high and low
water marks are the result of winds from the east or the west and great variations in its
height are rare. Natural entrance is gained only through the Skaggerak and Kattegat, the
second of which has many passages that are narrow, shallow, and easily mined. These
factors, combined with the manner in which the Baltic acts as a large drainage basin for
many rivers, produce waters with saline levels much lower than those of the adjoining
Atlantic Ocean. The lower salt content means that the Baltic freezes more easily than
other seas, producing an unusually long season of winter ice that makes navigation
dangerous and often impossible.1
During the Great War Baltic naval operations centered on various German and
Russian mining campaigns. The Germans devoted the bulk of their attention to the North
Sea and their Russian adversaries never felt strong enough, or indeed confident enough,
to risk their navy in the soon mine-strewn waters. One of the war’s critical intelligence
coups occurred in the Baltic Sea when, on 26 August 1914, the German cruiser
Magdeburg ran ashore because of poor visibility and the Russians recovered a copy of
the German signal book.
War, intervention, and the birth 13
The British launched a limited, but very successful Baltic operation, and had plans for
others. In October 1914, under the daring leadership of Commander Francis N.Cromie, a
flotilla of British submarines penetrated the straits and operated from Russian ports up
until the Russian Revolution. Their effective attacks closed the iron ore trade between
Germany and Sweden for a short time. Admiral Sir John (Jackie) Fisher concocted a
grandiose scheme for the construction of a fleet of 612 vessels to intervene in the Baltic
and land a Russian army on the German coast. There is doubt about the level of
seriousness that Fisher attached to this plan, and some historians believe that he used it
only as a point of discussion and intended many of the vessels for service in the North
Sea.
The Russian Revolution in 1917 devastated the Russian Baltic Fleet. Discipline in the
force collapsed as some sailors killed their officers and others fled from the upheaval that
soon engulfed their nation. The weakness of their enemy encouraged the Germans to
embark upon one of their most ambitious naval operations of the war: amphibious
landings on the islands of Moon and Ösel in the Gulf of Riga. The successful invasions
marked the largest commitment of German naval forces to the Baltic.2 In 1918, the
German Navy intervened in the Finnish Civil War on the side of the anti-communist
‘Whites’.
The Versailles Treaty and the subsequent scuttling of the interned German fleet at
Scapa Flow broke German naval power. Germany’s once great navy was reduced to an
obsolete force centered on eight pre-dreadnoughts.3 The disappearance of the Russian and
German battle fleets left traditionally neutral Sweden with the region’s most powerful
naval force.
After the war, Britain, France, and the Baltic littoral nations worked to clean up the
sea’s many minefields, a formidable task made even more difficult by postwar
revolutions, civil wars, and the British intervention. By 1919, six nations had laid
minefields in the Baltic: Britain, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Russia, and Sweden. Lack
of information on the location of the Russian fields, as well as the winter ice, which
scatters minefields by breaking their moorings, further complicated the situation.4
German, British, Estonian, Finnish, Latvian, and Soviet minesweepers, which were
often only speedboats fitted with makeshift clearing equipment, worked the sea. The
number of the potentially deadly devices laid in the Baltic is unknown, but estimates for
the Gulf of Finland alone run to 40,000 and merchantmen plying its waters fell victim to
mines as late as 1925.5
THE BRITISH AND FRENCH INTERVENTION
Anglo-French involvement in the military affairs of the Baltic States began a few days
after the closing barrages of the world war. On 20 November 1918, David Lloyd George
and the Imperial War Cabinet, in response to Estonian requests for assistance, sent naval
units to the Baltic to aid the new states of the region in their struggles for independence.
The Foreign Office supported this and encouraged the Admiralty’s action so as to help
implement Articles XXV and XXVI of the armistice, which, respectively, mandated
Allied naval access to the Baltic and the continuation of the wartime blockade. The
British also hoped to improve their relations with the emerging Baltic nations. The British
government believed that it could not bear the political price of sending troops to the
area, but when the Baltic States asked for assistance, Great Britain agreed to support them
with warships and supply arms and other equipment. On 21 November 1918, a British
fleet under the command of Rear-Admiral Edwyn Alexander Sinclair, sailed for the
Baltic. The prestige that Britain enjoyed in the region sprang from the actions of this
squadron and the others that followed it over the next three years.6
The British had other concerns as well. They feared that Germany and Russia might
enter into close postwar arrangements, and Britain believed that such a situation
threatened to upset the balance of power and could lead to another war. Because of this,
Britain took the risk of supporting the Baltic States, hoping that they, along with Poland,
could help form a buffer separating Germany and Russia. Latvian Prime Minister Kārlis
Ulmanis believed that in addition to reasons of international politics, Britain desired,
ideally, to make the Baltic a ‘British lake’ and reap the benefits in trade and political
influence that such an arrangement would provide.7
Quickly, concern developed in the Allied camp regarding Britain acting singly in the
Baltic. French intervention in the area began as a reaction to Great Britain’s move and on
19 December 1918, the French government dispatched the armored cruiser Montcalm and
four torpedo boats. The United States also sent a few destroyers, and the following April
saw the arrival of a French naval division.8
The French forces fulfilled a role similar to Britain’s by supervising the enforcement
of the Armistice terms and overseeing the political development of the Baltic States. The
French had the added mission of assisting the repatriation of approximately 40,000
French prisoners of war. The Allies followed the dispatch of vessels to the region with
military and economic missions that advised the Baltic States on many questions, the
most critical being defense against the Bolsheviks. For some time close cooperation
existed between the British and French missions.9
British and French intervention during the chaotic postwar period provided both
powers with certain advantages and degrees of influence in the various states when it
came to naval matters. The French emerged as the clear winners in the arena of naval
influence in Latvia, a victory largely resulting from the actions of the French Baltic
squadron and its commander, Vice-Admiral Jean Joseph Brisson (1868–1957).10
Admiral Brisson led the French Baltic squadron from April 1919 to October 1920,
when he relinquished his command to Capitaine de vaisseau Leguerré. Brisson worked
closely with his British counterparts in support of the independence movements in the
Baltic States. Initially, the French division numbered over 12 vessels, but was whittled to
five by the time of its withdrawal. Brisson served the French cause well and his superiors
always gave him high praise for his work, particularly his firm yet paternal attitude with
his men. The strength of his leadership was credited with preventing the unit’s men from
succumbing to Bolshevik propaganda,11 a real fear after the 1919 Black Sea mutiny of
French sailors.
Brisson’s flotilla assured French influence in Latvia by fighting in the defense of Riga.
During Latvia’s war for independence, one of the groups struggling for control in the area
was the mixed German-Russian army of an adventurer from the Caucasus, Colonel P.M.
Bermondt-Avalov. The guns of the French Navy helped protect the Latvian capital of
Riga from Bermondt-Avalov’s attacks. This not only ensured the liberation of Riga, but
also guaranteed the popularity of the French Navy in Latvia. The British also had ships
involved in the action, but the French bore the weight of this particular Allied effort.12
POLITICAL INDEPENDENCE: THE ORIGINS OF THE SUCCESSOR

STATES
The chaos of the Russian Revolution and Civil War, as well as the post-First World War
collapse of the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires, gave the minorities of the eastern
Baltic a chance to gain their independence. Strong national movements had arisen among
these groups during the latter half of the nineteenth century and their leaders proved
capable of guiding their respective peoples to independence. Freedom did not come
easily. Each of the fledgling nations faced a variety of enemies, and all had to shed blood
to break their chains.13
ESTONIA
In March 1917, on the heels of the February Russian Revolution, the Estonians achieved
political autonomy and shortly afterward began forming their own military units. After
the October Revolution, Estonia endured a short-lived Bolshevik government and
subsequent German invasion in February 1918. The latter event convinced Estonian
leaders to declare independence, which they did on 24 February 1918. Konstantin Päts
headed the provisional government.14
German rule proved harsher than that of the weak Estonian Bolsheviks, and short
lived, though immediately after the Armistice, German troops thwarted the initial
Bolshevik invasion. The Estonians began building a regular army and at a critical
moment, in December, received an influx of British and Finnish arms, as well as
volunteers from Scandinavia. The Estonians stopped the Soviet offensive during the first
week of January 1919, and then counterattacked, clearing the country of Soviet troops in
February. Sporadic fighting continued on the eastern frontier in the summer of 1919. The
Estonians also endured the Landswehr War in June 1919, when they defeated von der
Goltz’s German force. A 1920 peace treaty with the Bolsheviks brought Estonia’s wars of
independence to an end.15
LATVIA
The First World War saw Latvia occupied by the Germans and then partitioned by the
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. The Latvian National Council (LNC) struggled against efforts by
the Bolsheviks, as well as by the Baltic German minority, to attach the nation to either
Lenin’s Russia or imperial Germany. The LNC received recognition from Britain as
Latvia’s provisional government and on 18 November 1918 declared independence.16
Almost immediately, the new nation faced a desperate and complex military situation.
The Bolsheviks invaded in December, conquered three-quarters of the country, and set up
a Soviet state. With help from the British, the Germans, and the Estonians, the Latvians
organized an army. But the local German commander, General von der Goltz, had his
own agenda: German eastward expansion. He used the circumstances not only to fight the
Bolsheviks, but also to set up a puppet Latvian government. The Germans took Riga from
the Bolsheviks, but then turned to fighting the Latvians, as well as the Estonians, who had
come to Latvia’s aid, until the German defeat on 22 June 1919.17
Von der Goltz’s loss did not quench his ambitions. He joined his forces with
Bermondt-Avalov’s White Russian Army and attacked Riga. The Latvians, with French
and British assistance in the form of arms and naval support, especially from Admiral
Brisson’s squadron, defeated the invader. The Latvians cleared their new nation of
Bermondt-Avalov’s troops and signed a treaty with the Germans on 15 July 1920. With
Polish help, the Latvians drove off the last Bolshevik forces from the Latgale in January
1920, and signed a treaty with Moscow on 11 August 1921. By this time, an independent
democratic government had been established under the leadership of Kārlis Ulmanis.18
LITHUANIA
Lithuania spent most of the First World War under German occupation, and its leaders
struggled to bring their nation out from under the imperial thumb. They had little success
during the war, but this did not prevent them from declaring independence on 16
February 1918.19
Lithuania was kept afloat by German and then British economic support. But the
biggest threat came from the Bolsheviks, who invaded in December 1918. Hastily
assembled Lithuanian units and German volunteers prevented the complete conquest of
the country. Allied aid came in the spring of 1919. Lithuania owed its eventual liberation
to the people who became its most bitter enemy, the Poles, who took Vilna from the
Communists in April 1919. The resulting differences between Lithuania and Poland over
the possession of Vilna and its environs poisoned relations between the two nations and
impacted the entire region.20
The Lithuanians also had to fight Bermondt-Avalov’s Russian-German army. This
force entered Lithuania from Latvia in October 1919, and the Lithuanians defeated them
in November. Meanwhile, the Lithuanians continued to fight the Bolsheviks in
conjunction with the Poles until Moscow finally made peace in July of 1920.21
FINLAND
During the Russian Revolution, the Finns, who had always enjoyed a certain amount of
autonomy under the Tsarist regime, separated themselves from their imperial masters. A
civil war followed as non-Communist ‘Whites’, under the leadership of General Carl
Mannerheim, battled ‘Red’ forces which received substantial support from Lenin’s
Bolsheviks. The Whites, led by former Russian officers, primarily Swedes of Finnish
birth, organized an army to combat the Reds. The final White victory owed much to the
return to Finland of the 27th Jägers, a military unit drawn from the inhabitants of Finland
that had fought for Germany in the Great War, as well as the assistance of the Germans
themselves. The Jägers comprised the bulk of the lower ranks of the officer corps in the
Finnish Army and remained an influential political force for decades to come.22
In 1918, during Finland’s Civil War, the good relations between the Finns and Great
Britain soured. The White forces in Finland appealed to Germany for help in their
struggle for independence and the arrival of German troops in April 1918, as well as the
German occupation of the Åland islands the previous month, was disagreeable to Great
Britain. British officials were also upset by efforts to install a German prince as king of
Finland, and Germany’s attempt to establish a submarine base at the Karelian port of
Pechanga.23
August 1919 saw a revival in Anglo-Finnish relations. Mannerheim, after losing the
election to K.J.Ståhlberg, resigned his position as regent and politics in Finland began to
follow a different tack. Dr Rudolf Holsti, very much an Anglophile, became the new
Minister of Foreign Affairs and he steered Finland toward friendship with Great Britain.
The attitude at the Foreign Office had changed as well. Even during the rough period, as
early as August 1918, British officials recognized the importance of Finland as a potential
ally in the region and adopted a more conciliatory tone. A growing expectation in the
Foreign Office of an Allied victory over Germany accounted for some of the shift in
opinion.24
Economics played a strong role in the eventual rapprochement between the two states.
The Russian Revolution robbed Finland of its primary market and it needed new outlets
for its most important exports—wood and paper. The Finns saw Britain as the most likely
venue and Britain soon became the most important Finnish customer. Beneficial trading
arrangements soon turned the past unhappy relations between the two states into distant
memories.25
The presence of a British naval squadron in the Baltic during the Russian Civil War,
as well as British intervention, also helped Britain’s relations with Finland. During many
of the summer months of the intervention, the Royal Navy stationed a flotilla in an
anchorage off Bjorkö in the Gulf of Finland. In 1919, the Finns maintained a group of
minesweepers and torpedo boats at the anchorage as well, the British forces providing
welcome protection from the Bolshevik naval units that occasionally sortied from their
Kronstadt base to prowl the Gulf. From this spot the British launched their famous attack
on the Bolshevik fleet in Kronstadt. Lieutenant (later Captain) Augustus Agar also sailed
from this anchorage in a British motor torpedo boat (MTB) to attack and sink the Russian
cruiser Oleg.26
The presence of such naval units often presented the opportunity to influence
governments, especially when they wished to purchase arms. The French withdrew their
naval squadron from the Baltic in 1921 and Captain Vennin, France’s naval attaché for
Finland and the Baltic States, considered this a critical error that weakened French efforts
to counter British influence in the region. He believed that the flotilla’s suspension, due
to financial economies by the French government, injured France’s position. As a
curative, Vennin suggested frequent visits by French ships, believing that this would
prevent the furtherance of an idea he had heard voiced by important military leaders in
Poland and other states in the region: ‘France is not interested in the fate of the Baltic.’
To Vennin, the presence of a naval squadron was only one element in an effort to gain
influence comprising ‘an ensemble of political, economic, financial, and propaganda
measures’.27
POLAND
On a rainy February morning in 1920, thousands of Poles gathered at Puck harbor on the
coast of their new nation to participate in a solemn ceremony. Under the watchful eyes of
the crowds on the hillsides surrounding the bay, General Józef Haller rode into the water
and cast two platinum rings into the sea. The rings, a gift from the merchants of Danzig,
who had suggested the idea as well as the ceremony, symbolized a marriage, for Polska is
feminine and Balticus is masculine.28
Haller’s act marked in clear terms Poland’s commitment to the sea, a rendering of
devotion derived from a belief in the political and economic necessity of a modern state
possessing a sea coast and harbors. To defend its littoral and internal waterways, the new
nation needed a navy.
Modern Poland also arose from the chaos of the collapse of the three great continental
European empires at the end of the First World War. On 3 June 1918, in a meeting at
Versailles, the heads of the French, British, and Italian governments agreed to support the
establishment of an independent Poland. Before, and especially during the war, a number
of Polish groups pushed for independence and the Allies supported them as a means of
fragmenting the Austro-Hungarian Empire. When the war ended there were three Polish
groups vying for power over the new state. But only one individual, Józef Piłsudski, had
sufficient prestige as a fighter for Polish independence to unite the warring camps on both
sides of the political spectrum.29
But Poland, like its neighbors, had to fight the Soviets to remain free. Partially as a
means of countering the Soviet threat, Piłsudski wanted a large Poland in a federation
including independent Lithuanian, White Russian, and Ukrainian states. He insisted that
‘Poland will become a great power or she will not exist’.30 Warsaw sought political
dominance of its area of Eastern Europe and this effort explains much of Poland’s foreign
policy, as well as its poor relations with its neighbors.
Piłsudski’s ambitions, and his mistaken perceptions regarding the weakness of Lenin’s
Russia and the resoluteness of the Allied intervention, contributed to a failure of peace
talks between the Poles and the Bolsheviks in the spring of 1919. The war continued into
the spring of the following year, in spite of efforts by Lord Curzon to end it. The Poles
launched an offensive in March 1920 with the objective of creating a Polish-dominated
Ukraine, but the Bolsheviks threw it back. Lenin’s forces then invaded Poland, but were
defeated at the Battle of Warsaw on 16 August 1920. A peace treaty followed in March
1921.31
The French role in the victory became famous, particularly General Maxime
Weygand’s role. But the Poles did not see it in quite the same light as did the Western
powers and in their mind the support from London and Paris was not as strong at it could
have been. This convinced them that they would have to rely upon their own strength.32
To build this, they turned to Britain and France.
CONCLUSIONS
France and Britain played early roles in the development of the nations of the Baltic
littoral, whether as protectors, in advisory positions, or as the suppliers of arms. Spheres
of influence arose from their initial participation, though these were not as solid as the
Great Powers came to believe. French support of Poland’s independence and its military
efforts were the key planks in establishing France’s influential position in Warsaw. The
Polish Navy though, would flirt briefly with Britain, as Chapter 2 shows. The actions of
Admiral Brisson and the French Baltic squadron gave France a foot in the door in Latvia
that French officials would later successfully exploit. British intervention in the Baltic
bought them goodwill in Finland and Estonia, factors they later attempted to use to their
advantage.
When peace finally came to the Baltic the new states began planning for the future.
Naval defense was part of this. With the foundations for their influence laid, Britain and
France were eager to supply the new states with the necessary naval armaments—for a
price.
NOTES
1. Charles W.Koburger, Steel Ships, Iron Crosses, and Refugees: The German Navy in Baltic,
1939–1945 (New York: Praeger, 1989), pp. 9, 11–12; Gunnar Alexandersson, International
Straits of the World: The Baltic Straits (The Hague, Boston, MA, and London: Martinus
Nijhoff, 1982), pp. 16–17; Waldemar Westergaard, ‘Political and Military Factors: The
Baltic’, in War and Survival (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press,
1941), p. 99.
2. On the Baltic in the First World War see Paul G.Halpern, A Naval History of World War I
(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute, 1994), pp. 179–222.
3. Arthur J.Marder, From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow. The Royal Navy in the Fisher Era,
1904–1919, 5 vols (London, 1970), Vol. 5, pp. 270–95; Wallace Leigh Lewis, ‘The Survival
of the German Navy 1917–1920: Officers, Sailors and Politics’ (PhD diss., University of
Iowa, 1985), pp. 301–2.
4. Adolphe Laurens, Précis d’Histoire de la Guerre Navale 1914–1918 (Paris: Payot, 1929), pp.
261–2; S.B.de Courcy-Ireland, A Naval Life (Poulton, Glos., 1990), p. 61, privately printed,
copy in the Imperial War Museum (henceforth IWM).
5. Colonel R.B.Goodden, ‘Letters & Reports to DMI’, March 1925, Goodden Papers, IWM;
foreign press extracts from May and July 1924 in Service Historique de Marine (henceforth
SHM), 1BB7 129 Lettonie; Vennin, 13 Dec. 1923, and foreign press extracts from April,
May, and August 1924 in SHM, 1BB7 128 Lettonie.
6. G.Bennett, Cowan’s War: The Story of British Naval Operations in the Baltic, 1918–1920
(London: Collins, 1984), pp. 28–33; Edgar Anderson, ‘The British Policy Toward the Baltic
States 1918–1920’, Journal of Central European Affairs 19 (Oct. 1959), 288.
7. William A.Fletcher, ‘The British Navy in the Baltic, 1918–1920: Its Contribution to the
Independence of the Baltic Nations’, Journal of Baltic Studies 7 (Summer 1976), 135.
8. Edgar Anderson, ‘An Undeclared Naval War: The British-Soviet Naval Struggle in the Baltic,
1918–1920’, Journal of Central European Affairs 22 (Apr. 1962), 48.
9. M.Peltier, ‘Campagne en Mer Baltique Souvenirs’, Revue Maritime (Oct. 1965), 1126;
Anderson, ‘An Undeclared Naval War’, pp. 48, 53; Anderson, ‘British Policy Toward the
Baltic States’, pp. 281–6.
10. George von Rauch, The Baltic States, the Years of Independence: Estonia, Latvia,
Lithuania, 1917–1940, trans. Gerald Onn (London: Hurst, 1995), pp. 54, 73–4; Delevaud to
Leygues, 4 Oct. 1920, and Obituary in Ministre du Defense Bulletin, 29 July 1957, SHM,
CC7 4ème moderne 1124/8, Dossier individuel du Vice-Amiral Brisson (hereafter Dossier
Brisson).
11. Delevaud to Leygues, 4 Oct. 1920, Dossier Brisson, SHM; Peltier, ‘Souvenirs’, pp. 1126–7.
12. Vennin to MM, 26 Dec. 1923, SHM, 1BB7 128 Lettonie; Delevaud to Leygues, 4 Oct. 1920,
Dossier Brisson, SHM; d’Ythurbide, ‘Note sur un voyage a Riga et Reval’, 8 Nov. 1920,
SHM, 1BB7 125 Finlande; Peltier, ‘Souvenirs’, p. 1126; Rauch, Baltic States, p. 68; Edgar
Anderson, Latvia Past and Present-1918–1968 (Waverly, IA: National Latvian Publishers,
1969), p. 37.
13. David Kirby, The Baltic World, 1772–1993: Europe’s Northern Periphery in an Age of
Change (London and New York: Longman, 1993), pp. 276–85.
14. Toivo Raun, Estonia and the Estonians (Stanford, CA: Hoover, 1991), pp. 101–2, 105.
15. Ibid., pp. 106–10.
16. Bernadotte E.Schmitt and Harold C.Vedeler, The World in the Crucible, 1914–1919 (New
York: Harper and Row, 1984), pp. 440–2.
17. Ibid., pp. 442–4.
18. Ibid., p. 444.
19. Ibid., pp. 444–6; Thomas G.Chase, The Story of Lithuania (New York: Stratford House,
1946), pp. 265, 268.
20. Schmitt and Vedeler, World in the Crucible, pp. 446–7.
21. Ibid., pp. 447–8.
22. D.G.Kirby, Finland in the Twentieth Century (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota,
1979), pp. 40–9.
23. Kirby, Finland, p. 53; J.S.Corbett and H.Newbolt, History of the Great War: Naval
Operations, 5 vols (London: Longmans, Green, 1931), Vol. 5, pp. 314–17; Vennin to 2ème
Bureau, EMG, received 22 Feb. 1924, SHM, 1BB7 129 Lettonie; Sir Hubert Gough,
Soldiering On: Being the Memoirs of General Sir Hubert Gough (London: Arthur Barker,
1954), pp. 190–1, 196–7; Kirby, Baltic World, p. 281.
24. Vennin to 2ème Bureau, EMG, received 22 Feb. 1924, SHM, 1BB7 129 Lettonie; Kirby,
Finland, pp. 55–6; Kirby, Baltic World, p. 281.
25. Vennin to 2ème Bureau, EMG, received 22 Feb. 1924, SHM, 1BB7 129 Lettonie; Kirby,
Finland, p. 56; Sundbäck, ‘Finland in British Baltic Policy’, pp. 374, 376.
26. Vennin to 2ème Bureau, EMG, received 22 Feb. 1924, SHM, 1BB7 129 Lettonie. For an
account of Agar’s actions that won him the Victoria Cross see Augustus Agar, Baltic
Episode: A Classic of Secret Service in Russian Waters (London: Hodder & Stoughton,
1963).
27. Vennin to 2ème Bureau, EMG, received 22 Feb. 1924, SHM, 1BB7 129 Lettonie.
28. Grace Humphrey, Poland the Unexplored (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1931), pp. 129–
31; Jürg Meister, ‘Die polnischen Flußflottillen 1919–1939’, Marine Rundschau 66 (Aug.
1969), 230; Robert Vaucher, Marins & marine de Pologne (Paris: Bloud & Gay [1940]), pp.
6–9.
29. Roman Debicki, Foreign Policy of Poland 1919–1939: From the Rebirth of the Polish
Republic to World War II (New York: Praeger, 1962), p. 6; R.F.Leslie (ed.), The History of
Poland Since 1863 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), pp. 125, 427–30;
Schmitt and Vedeler, World in the Crucible, pp. 419–20.
30. Leslie, History of Poland, p. 133.
31. Ibid., pp. 136–8; Philip C.F.Bankwitz, Maxime Weygand and Civil Military Relations in
Modern France (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967), pp. 22–3.
32. Leslie, History of Poland, p. 133.
2
Naval Development in the Baltic Successor
States, 1918–22
After winning their independence, the Baltic successor states began developing naval
forces to supplement the armies vital for the maintenance of their hard-won freedoms.
None had the money or industrial capability to build navies on their own and all looked to
the Western powers for assistance.
ESTONIA
On 24 December 1918 the British Navy’s destroyers, Wakeful, Vendetta, and Vortigern,
elements of the British Baltic intervention force, sailed from Tallinn and intercepted a
Bolshevik destroyer bombarding a lighthouse on the Estonian coast. The destroyer fled,
fired two wildly inaccurate shots as it departed, then suddenly hoisted a white flag. The
British boarded the vessel, discovering that it had sheared the blades from both propellers
by running over a well-marked rock. The men of the Vendetta removed the destroyer’s
crew and took the prize in tow. The unfortunate ship had a jammed helm and refused to
be pulled in the ordinary manner, forcing the Vendetta to come alongside and shepherd
the damaged vessel to Tallinn.1
Early the next morning, at 2:45 a.m., the Wakeful and two other British warships, the
cruisers HMS Calypso and HMS Caradoc, sailed to search for any Bolshevik naval
activity. At a quarter before noon the British sighted another lone Bolshevik destroyer.
The British closed and opened fire. Their initial shots were inaccurate, but after Wakeful
put a round through the destroyer’s ensign it quickly struck its colors. The British
presented the vessels to the Estonians, who promptly renamed them Wambola and
Lennuk, and pressed them into service as the mainstays of the new Estonian Navy.2
The Estonians joined these two ships with several former Russian and German
gunboats and minelayers. Before the addition of the destroyers, the primary element of
the Estonian Navy had been the Lembit, a small Russian torpedo boat abandoned in
Estonian waters. The commander of the force was Captain (later Vice-Admiral) Juhan
Pitka, a former merchant marine captain.3
During 1919 the small Estonian Navy cooperated with the British forces, now under
the command of Rear-Admiral Walter Cowan, in operations against the Bolsheviks. The
Estonian naval force fought its first action in June 1919, when its ships destroyed Russian
artillery positions at Dunamünde, then forced their way up the Daugava River to assist a
Latvian counterattack against Riga. The British and Estonian naval forces cooperated to
land Estonian troops behind Bolshevik lines on several occasions. Britain’s intervention,
and its material and military aid, gave the Estonians a tremendous morale boost. This,
and the gift of the two destroyers, laid the foundation for British naval influence in
Estonia.4
When the Estonians began to consider additional vessels for their coastal defense they
turned to their old ally, Great Britain. In April 1920, Dr Ants Piip, of the Estonian
Legation in London, asked the Admiralty about purchasing a few 40 and 55 foot torpedo-
equipped coastal motorboats (CMBs). During its intervention in the Baltic, the Royal
Navy had used these vessels with great effectiveness and Estonia hoped to create a small,
defensive flotilla composed of torpedo boats and monitors. The proven effectiveness of
the CMBs in the confined waters of the Baltic probably accounts for the Royal Navy’s
initial reluctance regarding the sale. Moreover, the Admiralty did not enjoy encouraging
small states to build navies, but did consider it advisable that these same states be in a
position to protect their respective frontiers. But they also realized that if Great Britain
did not agree to the Estonian proposal another nation surely would, and in the end agreed
to sell two of its CMBs currently designated for use as targets.5
Lord Curzon, the Foreign Minister, agreed with the proposal, but Foreign Office
officials feared that the Estonians might be taken advantage of. One wrote: ‘presumably
these “targets” are the worst motorboats in the possession of the Navy. It really is a
scandal if my assumption is correct. I think we ought to make a judicious inquiry.’ The
Foreign Office did not credit the Admiralty with the integrity it possessed and the sailors
assured the diplomats that the boats were ‘quite good’.6
The Admiralty asked £2,000 per boat, excluding torpedoes, and insisted that the
Estonians incur any additional costs, such as transport. The Foreign Office gave Piip the
details and waited for a reply. None came, and subsequent requests produced nothing.
Undoubtedly the deal fell afoul of Estonia’s finances; the British would find this a normal
event in the region, particularly in Estonia. A similar early Estonian effort to buy
destroyers also came to nothing.7
Despite budgetary constraints, the Estonians managed to make an addition to their
navy in 1924. The Estonian government hired the Russo-Baltic Company to raise the
German coastal torpedo boat, A.32, which had sunk near Sahm Island on the Estonian
coast during the First World War. Raising and refitting the vessel cost 11,000,000
Estonian marks; the construction of a new ship of a similar type would have been about
60,000,000 marks. Christened Sulev, it joined the Estonian Navy on 27 April 1924.8
As the Estonians examined the possibility of expanding their fleet, they did not ignore
the important matter of training the officers a navy requires. From this arose one of the
many strange incidents in Baltic naval development. Sometime in early 1920, the
Estonians retained the services of H.F.Littledale, a former British naval officer, as an
advisor to the Estonian Navy. Littledale pursued ties with the Royal Navy by seeking
permission to send Estonian naval cadets to Britain for training. He saw this as a means
of ‘spreading English influence among the better class Esthonians [sic]’. Littledale
broached the subject with the British Consul in Tallinn in late May 1920, asking to send
six to eight 18-year-old cadets to Great Britain. The Estonian government strongly
supported this, being anxious to model their navy along British lines.9
In early June 1920, as the issue of training the Estonian cadets was still finding its way
through diplomatic and military channels, Littledale requested a number of Royal Navy
technical and training manuals for the use of the Estonian Naval Staff. The Admiralty
refused, surprising the Foreign Office, whose officials well knew that none of the works
Naval development in the baltic successor 23
were confidential and that most could be purchased easily. The Admiralty insisted that
Estonia’s unstable political situation drove their refusal, but they also took the trouble to
‘explain that the person referred to as Commander Littledale is presumably a Lieutenant-
Commander, RN, of that name, who deserted from the Navy in June 1916 and stated that
he joined the Army. He holds no appointment approved by the Admiralty.’10
The Foreign Office understood the Admiralty’s reluctance to deal with a deserter, but
stressed British government efforts to do everything possible to help the Estonians.
Moreover, the Foreign Office did not want the matter to produce an ‘unfortunate
impression’ and encouraged the Admiralty to reconsider.11
Meanwhile, the negotiations for the training of the Estonian naval cadets continued. In
June 1920, Piip made a formal request to send nine cadets to Great Britain and the
Foreign Office encouraged the Admiralty to give ‘favorable consideration to the
request’.12
The Admiralty refused this as well, insisting that it did not have the facilities available.
Once again, the Admiralty response caused confusion and probably not a little
consternation at the Foreign Office. One official remarked that there was really no reason
why the Estonian cadets could not serve on British ships as Chilean officers had done.13
Obviously, Littledale’s status as a deserter influenced the decision.
In early August, Littledale once again pressed the matter of Estonian naval cadet
training. He insisted that the earlier refusal ‘caused considerable comment amongst
Esthonian [sic] Naval officers’. Moreover, he pleaded Estonia’s case with reminders of
naval cooperation during the British intervention in the Baltic, and Britain’s award of
decorations to Vice-Admiral Pitka, the former Commander-in-Chief of the Estonian
Navy.14
Apparently the Foreign Office’s appeal for the books fell on at least partially
sympathetic ears and the Admiralty eventually agreed to send four of the requested
works. They refused the others, insisting that they were either confidential or unavailable.
The Admiralty denied the request for training, citing a lack of facilities. A subsequent
1924 training request was also refused. By this time though, the Royal Navy had adopted
a policy of providing instruction to foreign officers only in ships that their nations had
purchased in Great Britain. Later, this decision would return to haunt many British arms
salesmen and diplomats working in the Baltic.15
Littledale disappears from the scene after this; why is unclear. But during this period
the Estonians viewed Britain, and particularly the Royal Navy, as one of its best hopes
for survival against any Bolshevik attack. Because of this it is not too far-fetched to
assume that the Estonian government chose to relieve itself of a potential obstacle in its
relations with London.
LATVIA
In October 1919, at the time of the Bermondt invasion, the Latvians scraped together
every river craft they could find into a small flotilla that took part in the fighting. This
motley collection of vessels performed valuable duty transporting troops and stores and
bombarding enemy positions. In August 1920, when the Latvians concluded the Riga
Treaty ending the war with Lenin’s Russia, they demobilized their flotilla, retaining only
one vessel and its crew, a small Naval Staff at the Ministry of War, and a few
instructional personnel for the naval schools and workshops.16
However, the Latvians hoped to expand their coastal defense forces. The Allies
refused two Latvian requests for former German warships. Moreover, using Estonia’s
receipt of the two Russian destroyers from Britain, the Latvians petitioned Paris,
unsuccessfully, for elements of Denikin’s Black Sea fleet. Though rebuffed, Riga
persisted and during the Latvian-German peace talks of June 1920, demanded four
submarines, ten torpedo boats, and 20 minesweepers. They got nothing.17
Undaunted, on 13 August 1920, the Latvian government asked for the transfer of a
number of old US warships. Their list included: four 600–800 ton submarines, ten coal-
fired, 25 to 30 knot torpedo boats of 600 tons, and 24 trawlers of 100–500 tons. This
request passed through several hands, finally landing on the desk of Acting Secretary of
the Navy R.E.Coontz in June 1920. He denied it, citing President Warren G.Harding’s
recent decision to forbid sales of US Navy ships to South America.18
The Latvians, experienced with rejection, were not so easily put off. In July 1920,
after hearing from the US naval attaché in Copenhagen about other US warships being
put on the market, the Latvians once again tried to buy submarines, minesweepers, and
some old destroyers. The US Navy Department remained welded to the wharf.19 The
Latvians then looked to France.
LITHUANIA
To speak of naval development in Lithuania is to confer upon the events a title

undoubtedly beyond what they deserve. The Lithuanians made nothing in the way of
naval purchases during this period, but they were one of the battlegrounds for influence
and trade, the recipient of a French mission, and an area that France hoped to pull into the
Polish orbit.
Of all the states of the Baltic littoral this new nation had the shortest coastline, only
about 20 miles. This increased in 1924 with the addition of the Klaipeda (Memel) region,
which gave Lithuania a second harbor in addition to its tiny port of Sventoji. Obviously,
Lithuania required only minimal naval forces.20
In February 1920, the Klaipeda territory came under the temporary administration of
France. The presence of French troops made the Liths uneasy, and Paris’s strong ties with
Warsaw, a nation Kaunas feared and hated even more than Lenin’s Russia, clouded
France’s relationship with Lithuania. French rule of Klaipeda proved efficient and
sympathetic, largely because France wanted the area to become part of Poland. The
French also tried, unsuccessfully, to pressure Lithuania to join with Poland and Klaipeda
in a Swiss-style confederation.21
Despite Lithuania’s fears and France’s ambitions, fairly good relations between France
and Lithuania marked the immediate period after the close of the First World War. In
March 1919, a French military mission under Lieutenant-Colonel Constantin Reboul
arrived to help build the Lithuanian Army. The French saw his mission as a means of
preventing Britain from establishing a position of influence in Lithuania. Paris also
believed that Reboul’s mission would offset any chance of Germany dominating
Lithuania’s affairs.22
The mission did establish significant French ties with Lithuania, and also succeeded in
arranging contracts for the sale of small arms to the Lithuanian Army, but by the spring
of 1920, the amiable Franco-Lithuanian relationship had broken on the rock of
negotiations to delineate the Polish-Lithuanian frontier. France’s generally pro-Polish
attitude undermined the good impression generated by Reboul, and the Lithuanians sent
the mission home.23
Further blows to Franco-Lithuanian amity followed. In autumn 1922, after the failure
of efforts to reconcile differences between the Lithuanians and the Poles, the Allied
Powers Commission drew up a statute for Klaipeda. The Lithuanians, fearful that the
commission had inclinations toward the German idea of a free state, organized a secret
insurrection, one supported by arms and money from Lithuanian Americans.24
In Klaipeda, the French had a garrison of as many as 900 men from a battalion of
Chasseurs. On 10 January 1921, a Lithuanian force of 5,000–6,000 men marched into
Klaipeda. The Lithuanian irredentists wore civilian clothes, but many came from cavalry
regiments of the Lithuanian Army, and were led by Colonel John Budrys. The French
garrison withdrew on 16 January, but not before some minor fighting resulted in the
deaths of one French soldier and two Lithuanians.25
This incident, as well as French support for Poland, dealt a grievous blow to Franco-
Lithuanian amity. Moreover, the French and British both responded by ordering warships
to Klaipeda. The British dispatched a light cruiser, Caledon, the French the Voltaire,
under the command of Admiral A. le Querre, as well as two destroyers. Eventually, a
Polish torpedo boat conveyed Colonel Trousseau, the head of the French military mission
in Poland, to Lithuania. A wry British observer called the choice of a Polish vessel
‘unfortunate’.26
France violently protested Lithuania’s action. Raymond Poincaré, the French
President, threatened and raged against the Lithuanians. The Liths simply replied that
they had no ‘moral authority’ over the insurgents, and annexed the region. Unable to act
against the Lithuanians, Poincaré took a different tack: conciliation, and the Allied
governments decided to approve the Lithuanian fait accompli. The upset Poles wanted to
take military action, but Poincaré dissuaded them. Enough damage had already been done
and the plans that France harbored for Polish-Lithuanian rapprochement were dead. On 8
May 1924, the Klaipeda Convention recognized Lithuanian possession of the region.
Afterward, the issue faded into the diplomatic background—until Hitler’s ascension to
power.27
FINLAND
In July 1918, a dozen former officers of the Russian Imperial Navy, led by Count
Admiral Johannes Indrenius, officially founded Finland’s new navy, which included the
coastal artillery detachments. Indrenius, like the two officers who succeeded him,
Hjalmar von Bonsdorf and G.T.J.von Schoultz, was a former Tsarist naval officer. At the
time, a Finnish newspaper carried an article declaring that the navy would become the
most important branch of Finland’s armed forces.28 The report proved overly optimistic.
During their civil war, the Finns took over a number of Russian vessels and several
seaplanes that had been abandoned in their harbors. These small ships, many of them
only motorboats outfitted as minesweepers, became the nucleus of the future Finnish
fleet.29
By the end of 1919, the new navy had about 100 officers and 2,000 men. The initial
officer cadres came largely from the old Imperial Russian Navy and the Finnish
Merchant Marine. Veterans of the merchant service proved the most numerous, and
remained a strong element in the force’s leadership for many years. The lower-ranking
officers also included a group of young recruits referred to as fänriks, who usually had
little or no experience at sea. The term fänrik was derived from an old Swedish term in
use by at least the 1500s. The Germans trained the young officers and divided them into
two commands, Lehrkommando Sandhamn, which prepared men to serve at sea, and the
Lehrkommando Torra Mjölö, which trained the officers and ratings who supplied the
cadres manning the fortifications along the coast and on Lake Ladoga. About 70 men
served in each of the Kommandos and a few advanced to the new naval academy in 1920.
About 1,600 of the 2,000 men of the navy served on ships and motorboats divided into
two flotillas engaged in the most pressing task facing the new force—minesweeping.30
In 1919, under the direction of General Oskar Enckell, the Chief of the General Staff,
the Finns launched a three-year campaign to clear a path 10 miles wide between
Stockholm and Helsinki. Their minesweeping forces grew by Germany’s return to
Finland in February 1920 of three steam-powered minesweepers, Beo, Wulf, and Mikula,
which they had taken in 1918. The Finnish Navy also ordered four motorboats from
native yards at Turku (Åbo) to supplement the sweeping forces, but the Navy’s poverty
delayed their delivery.31
Shortly after the establishment of its navy, the Finnish government began trying to
expand it. Two routes presented themselves: buying vessels abroad, or raising and
refitting various Russian and British ships sunk in the waters off Finland during the war
and the Allied intervention. Both of these courses necessitated close relations with the
British, who had the desired ships, as well as the technical knowledge to repair the raised
vessels. The Finns though, did not confine their purchase efforts to Great Britain. They
often dealt with other nations and among the states of the eastern Baltic, Finland proved
the most likely to stray from the hands of British and French builders.
The Finnish Navy wanted to build a defensive force to protect Finland’s rugged
coastline. It submitted its first fleet building program to the government in March 1919,
one that proved far too ambitious for the nation’s industry and finance. It called for the
purchase or construction of 95 ships with a total displacement of 31,900 tons. The
centerpieces were four 3,500-ton armored coastal defense ships, and four 1,300-ton
destroyers. The vast majority of the material would have had to come from abroad, with
the obvious result of making Finland susceptible to the foibles of foreign governments
and suppliers. This they hoped to avoid. The program’s expense doomed it, but this did
not prevent the navy from attempting to acquire the vessels necessary to the nation’s
defense.32
In 1919 the Finns embarked upon their first efforts to procure British warships.33 This
marked the beginning of numerous naval arms negotiations with Britain over the next
two decades. It also established the precedent for the inept manner in which the British
generally dealt with Finnish inquiries, as well as the lack of British conscientiousness in
regard to Finland. Both of these factors hindered the growth and development of the
Finnish Navy, prevented it from becoming a stronger force, and by this, weakened the
cordon sanitaire.
On 2 July 1919, fearful of a Bolshevik attack, the Finnish government requested naval
assistance on Lake Ladoga in the form of Royal Navy CMBs. If the British refused to
help, the Finns wanted to buy 12 CMBs and 50 torpedoes. The British, already heavily
committed in the Baltic, had no desire to deploy additional British sailors to Lake
Ladoga. Admiral Cowan’s intervention forces had two 40 foot CMBs and the Admiralty
authorized the sale of these if Cowan had no need of them. They asked £6,000 per boat
and valued eight torpedoes at about the same amount.34
The Foreign Office consented, but with conditions. They required the Finnish
government, once invited, to adhere to the International Convention for the Control of
Arms Traffic concluded among the Allies at Paris on 10 September 1919. One of the
agreement’s articles prohibited the re-exportation of weapons sold to another party.
Because of this, the British insisted that the Finns supply assurances that the CMBs
would not be resold.35 Here, we see an early example of what became one of the
hallmarks of British diplomatic strategy between the wars: an effort to tie the possession
of naval armaments to treaties limiting such weapons.
The Finns, in their efforts to acquire vessels for Lake Ladoga, had the support of many
British officials, including Captain J.D.Scale, Britain’s assistant military attaché in
Helsinki. Scale believed that in order for the British to continue their blockade of Soviet
Russia in the spring of 1920, they had to strengthen the weakest area of Finland’s
defenses, Lake Ladoga. He argued, sensibly, that the Finns needed CMBs to thwart any
Bolshevik attack launched across the lake. Lieutenant Augustus Agar, who had extensive
operational and combat experience in CMBs, supported Scale and believed that four of
the craft would be sufficient. Scale insisted, as did the British charge d’affaires, that the
Finnish government and the ‘best elements in the country’ would welcome this
politically.36
The initial Finnish request came on 2 July 1919. In January 1920, the Admiralty
agreed to ‘sympathetically’ consider any Finnish proposals to purchase CMBs, but
hastened to add that no British personnel would man them.37 By this time, however, the
process had apparently taken too long and the Finns turned elsewhere—to Italy.
In the spring of 1920, the Finnish Navy began negotiations to purchase two MAS
torpedo boats, craft for which Italy became famous during the First World War. The two
Italian boats arrived in Helsinki in April 1920, and made a disastrous trial run on 17 May.
On a voyage from Helsinki to Tallinn and back, a round trip of 94 miles, the first boat’s
fuel pump failed, forcing the second to tow it to Tallinn for repairs.38
This embarrassing incident did not prevent the sale. The parties rescheduled the test
and it must have proved satisfactory because the Finns soon purchased the two vessels,
christening them Sisu and Hurja. Italy’s agreement to allow the Finns to pay the 120,000
lire price for the boats with Finnish paper proved irresistible to cash-strapped Helsinki.39
To supplement their light craft the Finns planned a submarine flotilla. In 1918, the
retreating Russians scuttled four submarines in Hangö harbor. The Finns raised at least
two of the wrecks with the intention of creating a submarine navigation school.40 These
Finnish efforts stirred immediate Anglo-French interest.
The Finns lacked the technicians to ascertain whether or not the submarines could be
refitted, as well as the specialists required to complete the repairs. A German engineer
who had worked in a submarine-building firm during the war offered to come to Finland
and do the necessary work. Many in the Finnish government tried to pressure General
Kivakäs, the Chief of the Navy and Coastal Defense, into accepting the appointment,
which Kivakäs opposed. French observers believed that Kivakäs mounted this opposition
because he was a ‘sincere Francophile, and as a Germanophobe still more sincere’.
Kivakäs also opposed the appointment to the Finnish Navy of a number of other
petitioning former German naval officers.41
In the summer of 1919, the French succeeded in installing a short-lived naval mission
in Finland under the direction of Capitaine de vaisseau Biffaud. The formal request for
the mission came from Finland in April of 1919, but before this Mannerheim had invited
both military and naval missions to help organize Finland’s defense forces. The French
welcomed the opportunity and Biffaud tried to use the Finnish need for technical
personnel to French advantage. In general, he acted in ‘view of developing French
influence in Finland, and particularly in the battle against’ what the French saw as ‘the
always dominant German influence’. London had apparently made a similar offer for a
naval mission. France was chosen because Paris more quickly offered Finland official
recognition.42
Early in the naval mission’s tenure, Mannerheim appointed an old friend, Colonel
(later General) Oskar Enckell, to head Finland’s naval and coastal defense forces. The
French greeted this enthusiastically, partly because Enckell was considered a
Francophile, but primarily because they considered him ignorant in regard to his new
duties. To the French, Enckell’s arrival would surely result in Biffaud, the head of the
French naval mission, becoming the de facto chief of the Finnish Navy.43 They quickly
learned the error of such thinking. At various times during the interwar years France and
Britain, as well as Germany, all harbored false hopes, and even delusions, of control over
a branch of Finland’s defense establishment. The Finns made no effort to dissuade them
from thinking otherwise, and simply took from each of the Great Powers the military
knowledge they thought useful for Finland’s defense.
In any event, in order to make the necessary repairs on the sunken submarine, Biffaud
proposed the appointment of a temporary mission of French naval construction experts.
Biffaud did not think the Finns needed specialists to make a number of the repairs,
including those necessary for the main engines, but that they did require a team of expert
technicians, French of course, for the repair of the cables, electric motors, compasses,
gyroscopes, and periscopes.44
Nothing came of Biffaud’s efforts and the Finns never put the submarines in service.
One, AG.16, a US-designed boat, did receive limited repairs. But the Finns could not
muster the funds for the replacement of the most delicate instruments, such as the
gyroscopes and periscopes. Finland’s efforts to repair this vessel would lead them to their
first cooperative efforts with the Germans.45
The French did manage to establish some firm contacts with the Finnish Navy during
this period, probably as a result of the French naval mission. In 1919, the first Finnish
naval officers went to study in France. Throughout the 1920s, the Finns regularly sent
officers to train with the French Navy. The Finns incurred all costs for the training, and in
early 1920 the French were charging the Finns 1,000 francs a month per student attending
the gunnery and torpedo courses.46
Some French officials disagreed with this policy of training Finnish officers. But most
saw them as future agents of French influence in Finland, foot soldiers in the fight against
German dominance. But concern did exist that they posed a security risk.47 As events
later demonstrated, this concern was not so far-fetched.
In addition to help on the former Russian submarine, the Finns approached the French
in January 1920 for assistance in procuring torpedo components. The Finns had a large
number of Russian Model 1912 450mm torpedoes, which were of German design and
construction, and the replacement parts for which resided in a warehouse in Kiel. The
Versailles Treaty forbade the export of such components from Germany, but the Finns
hoped that French pressure would open the warehouse doors. Such a request was not
unusual during this period, particularly from the Finns, but much of the time they did not
bother to go through formal channels and just directly, and illegally, imported German
war materials. Heavily involved in this was the Somersalo firm, headed by Artur
Somersalo, whose brother served as the Chief of the Finnish Air Force. The Finns also
applied for a license to manufacture copies of German Hansa-Brandenburg aircraft,
something that the French interpreted as a violation of article 179 of the Versailles
Treaty, and which produced a French protest. Neither the known transport of German war
material to Finland, or supposed efforts by Somersalo to keep French aircraft firms from
doing business with the Finns, kept the French from trying to sell their wares in
Finland.48
France’s Naval Mission had a short tenure. In May 1920, French budget cuts
necessitated a reduction in personnel. Biffaud was ordered home, and d’Ythurbide moved
into his former chief’s post.49 His position would later be reduced to that of naval attaché
for Finland and the Baltic States.
The Finns also sent four officers to Britain in 1920, some of whom attended the
gunnery training school on Whale Island (HMS Excellent), the first of several Finns who
would spend time training in the United Kingdom, but the Admiralty refused a request to
allow Finnish officers to serve on its vessels. At the time, for security reasons, it was
against Royal Navy policy to train foreign officers on board Royal Navy warships.
However, the British did agree to provide classroom instruction and admitted several
Finnish officers to British gunnery, engineering, and torpedo courses in 1922, at Finnish
expense, courses which Polish officers had undertaken the previous year. In the late
1920s and early 1930s, the Finns also sent some of their personnel to courses in Denmark
and Sweden.50 Others trained in Italy during the 1920s.
After the demise of the first naval program, a committee was established under the
direction of General Enckell to study Finland’s coastal defense needs and submit a new
plan. Probably because of the difficulties that Finland was then having with Sweden over
the possession of the Åland Islands, the report focused upon Sweden as the most likely
enemy. The government, when reviewing the plan, reminded Enckell’s group that
Finland had two neighbors that had at some point dominated Finland. The plan went back
to Enckell and his committee for revision. They took their task seriously and over the
next year and a half prepared a detailed, four-volume study of Finland’s naval and coastal
defense needs. The plan, completed by 30 June 1920, was substantially different from its
predecessor and called for the construction of 60 vessels, including submarines, torpedo
boats, and destroyers, with a combined displacement of 22,924 tons. The committee
foresaw its completion over a 6-year period through the expenditure of 560,000,000
Finnish marks.51
Britain opposed Finland’s purchase of submarines, and the reason sheds some light on
one of the elements of Britain’s interwar naval strategy. In October 1920, at a meeting of
the League of Nations Armament Commission, which was being held as part of the
examination of the question of Finland’s entry into the League, the Great Powers
discussed Finland’s ambition to acquire a submarine force, as well as similar efforts by
the other small states of the Baltic. By a vote of six to one, the Naval Sub-Commission
proposed authorizing Finland a force of not more than four submarines, none of which
could displace more than 400 tons. The British delegate voted against the proposal, the
only one to do so, arguing that under ‘the present uncertain conditions the possession of
submarines tends to facilitate acts of hostility which it is the duty of the League of
Nations to prevent’.52
The British action did little to endear them to the Finns. President Rudolf Holsti called
the British attitude ‘unjustified’. In Helsinki’s eyes, submarines were vital, and their lack
of them left the nation essentially defenseless against the Bolshevik fleet. One Finnish
official reminded the British that Admiral Cowan had recommended to no less a person
than the President of Finland that the Finns acquire a force of submarines and destroyers,
this being their best means of defending their rugged coastline. Admiral James
A.Ferguson, the Assistant Chief of Naval Staff, also expressed similar views on Finland’s
defense needs to Finnish officials. The Finns asked the British to change their policy of
opposition.53
These events disturbed the British representative to Helsinki. He feared that the only
result of the action had been the creation of Finnish bitterness and disappointment with
Britain. These feelings were ‘accentuated by the fact that the attitude of Great Britain’s
representative is in flat contradiction with the opinion expressed unofficially by British
naval experts here’.54
The reason for the British vote lay with the Admiralty. In the days following the First
World War, the Royal Navy pushed to abolish the use of submarines, a position that was
terribly unrealistic in light of the success of such vessels during the First World War.
Obviously, the Royal Navy did not achieve this goal, and Admiralty correspondence
noted that ‘it was found that [this] policy could not be carried through’. Nevertheless, the
Sea Lords believed that banning submarines best suited the needs of the British Empire.
Accordingly, they instructed their representatives at the League of Nations to follow this
line.55 This was the root of Helsinki’s problem.
The Admiralty, however, soon changed its position on Finland’s possession of
submarines. Since the League of Nations later approved Finland’s request for such craft,
in spite of Britain’s objections, the Admiralty agreed to help the Finns purchase them.
But they refused to ‘depart from their previous standpoint’ regarding the use of such
vessels. The Foreign Office also withdrew its opposition and offered help. One of its
officials noted that the Admiralty did not truly approve of such sales, but since their veto
had been overruled, they tried to ‘make the best of a bad business’. The Admiralty
eventually replied that it did not have available for purchase submarines of the type
Finland wanted, but the answer did not arrive until August 1921, nearly 10 months after
the initial request. None of this sat well with the Finnish Navy, which regarded Britain’s
conduct as arbitrary and unjust, especially since the British had not vetoed similar
proposals from Norway and Denmark.56
While the negotiations on the submarines continued, the Finns tried to purchase two
destroyers that had been sunk off Finland’s coast during the British intervention in the
Baltic. The British had planned to sell them for scrap to a Finnish salvage firm, but after
the Finnish request a British official in Helsinki suggested that Britain give Finland the
vessels for free, an act sure to buy much goodwill. He was partially motivated by a belief
that the Finns were jealous over Britain’s gift of two Bolshevik destroyers to the
Estonians, and thought that this might assuage Helsinki’s feelings.57
Foreign Office comments about ‘jealousy’ are indicative of the arrogant attitude of
many British policymakers toward small powers. Accusing smaller states of acting purely
from petty, emotional reasons was a typical occurrence during this period. The British
failed to realize that the Finns were pursuing a policy fitted to their own interests. Later,
when the Finns drew closer to the Germans, they showed London just how independent
they could be.
Foreign Office opinion about how to address the latest Finnish request varied. Some
wanted to use the destroyers to pressure the Finns into granting economic concessions to
British businesses trading in Finland. Others saw an opportunity to reward the Finns for
their support when, in November 1920, the Royal Navy diverted the Finnish passenger
liner Ariadne to remove eight Bolsheviks as insurance against the release of a number of
British sailors the Soviets held in Baku. The passengers of the Ariadne ‘are reported to
have keenly appreciated the removal of [the] Bolsheviks who had made themselves
objectionable and whose presence in first class was resented’.58
A Finnish firm, the Salvage Association of Helsingfors, had already asked for rights to
the wrecks. The Admiralty request for a quote on their recovery had conditions that
included a Finnish government ‘guarantee’, one that undoubtedly concerned the return of
any human remains or valuable papers. The Admiralty asked Donner, the Finnish
Minister in London, to convey this to the Salvage Association. The Finnish government
found themselves ‘for various reasons unable to give this guarantee’, whereupon Donner
suggested that since the Admiralty’s negotiations with the private company had broken
down, that his government should salvage the wrecks. A Foreign Office official
speculated that the Admiralty’s message never reached the Salvage Association and that
the Finns had seized upon the situation to acquire the wrecks for themselves.59 This
seems an apt assessment.
The British had no objections to the Finns salvaging the vessels, as long they agreed to
turn over any recovered confidential papers and ships’ logs, as well as the personal
effects of deceased sailors. The Finns agreed, and the British gave them the hulks of the
destroyers Verulam and Vittoria, which had been sunk during a single week in 1919. The
Finns planned to raise and refit them, but abandoned the project because of the cost. By
this time though, a better opportunity had arisen. Britain had finally answered Finland’s
request for the sale of a number of small destroyers, and at low prices as well.60
Unfortunately for the Finns, obstacles once again arose from surprising places.
POLAND
Poland founded its navy on 28 November 1918, a scant 17 days after the Polish
declaration of independence. Established by an order issued by Józef Piłsudski, Captain
Bogumil Nowotny, a former Austro-Hungarian naval officer, became the force’s first
head. In 1919, Rear-Admiral Kazimierez Porębski, a veteran of the Tsarist Navy,
succeeded him, an appointment resulting from the recommendations of a committee
chaired by Captain Jerzy Swirski, another future and, arguably, the most important head
of Poland’s navy between the wars. Not immediately convinced of the possibility of the
existence of a Polish Navy, Admiral Porębski wore a Polish Army general’s uniform for
some time.61
Most of the initial craft of the Polish Navy were small, often civilian boats of Russian
or German parentage, lightly armed, and collected into various coastal and river flotillas.
The first ship was a 200 ton steamer, Pomorzanin. Poland christened the river forces the
Vistula Flotilla and this cobbled-together unit of small boats and monitors did excellent
service during the Russo-Polish War of 1919–20. This conflict, and the military
assistance Paris rendered Warsaw, marked the beginning of significant French
involvement in the military and political affairs of modern Poland.62
But these vessels hardly suited the defensive needs of a modern state. The Polish
government wanted a force capable of defending its coastline and in the early days of the
nation’s independence they embarked upon a number of efforts to obtain warships.
On 3 November 1919, while the frontiers of Poland still remained unsettled, the Poles
laid claim to ships belonging to the former German and Austro-Hungarian navies. They
demanded the following: two light cruisers, two destroyers, as well as submarine chasers,
motorboats, and auxiliary ships. Poland insisted that since the construction of these ships
had been partly funded by the taxes of Poles in the two defunct empires, Poland had a
right to a portion of these fleets.63
Initially, some British officials hoped for the allocation to Poland of ex-Austrian
instead of former German warships. This was opposed by the British naval mission to
Poland, of which we will learn more in a moment, because they feared that since the
distances involved in transferring the vessels would delay Poland’s acquisition of them to
June of 1920, the resulting blow to the mission’s prestige would result in its cancellation
by Warsaw. Moreover, the Foreign Office feared (why remains unclear) that the League
of Nations Council of Ambassadors would accuse the British of trying to profit from
Poland’s need for warships.64
The Allies only agreed to allow the Poles six small, German torpedo boats, and these
they had to purchase. The Poles protested, but agreed. The price, £26,000, the poor
condition of the craft, and their lack of armament, turned some Polish officers against any
future purchases from Great Britain. The Poles renamed the former German ships Mazur
(ex-V.105), Krakowiak (ex-A.64), Kaszub (ex-V.108), Kujawiak (ex-A.68), Podhalanin
(ex-A.80), and Slazak (ex-A.59). The Poles also asked for two light cruisers and two
destroyers, as well as minesweepers, a hydrographic ship, auxiliary ships, and a depot
vessel for the torpedo boats.65
During 1921, Poland hired the Royal Dockyard at Rosyth to refit the torpedo boats.
Four of the boats were 360-ton A class vessels, the remainder 412-ton V class. The British
gave separate prices for refitting the ships of each class, £7,150 for the As, and £8,815 for
the Vs. The price for the work rose to £12,324 and £13,283 respectively, because of
charges that the British government levied on work done for foreign states. British
officials anticipated that the price would go even higher. The Poles attempted,
unsuccessfully, to have the initial charges reduced.66
The expense of refitting the craft in a British yard became more than the fledgling
Polish government could bear. The Poles suspended work on the Kujawiak and decided
that it cost too much to refit the two A class boats. The Poles did have British builders do
extensive work on three of the torpedo boats, and on 18 September 1921, Krakowiak,
Kujawiak, and Kaszub, with Polish crews, departed the Firth of Forth for Danzig. A
Foreign Office official remarked that ‘there was a certain amount of ceremony on their
departure including blessing the ships—having been German they obviously needed it’.
Two days before, the remaining vessels, Podhalanin, Mazur, and Slazak left Rosyth
under tow by the tug Bellegur. The Poles rebuilt them in their own yards and the six craft
became the core of the Polish Navy for several years.67
Poland also tried to get ships from the Bolsheviks. During the Polish-Soviet peace
talks at Riga in 1921, the Poles claimed ‘two Gagnut class battleships, ten large
destroyers, five submarines, ten minesweepers, 21 auxiliaries and transports, two
uncompleted Svetlana class cruisers’, as well as other equipment such as guns and mines.
In the course of the negotiations they reduced their demands, but Poland’s dreams of
acquiring vessels at the expense of the Soviet Union came to nothing.68 These Polish bids
for substantial numbers of warships were indicative of the dreams for a large navy
maintained by many in Polish diplomatic and military circles. In the future, these feelings
would give rise to some interesting and occasionally far-fetched Polish naval building
plans.
During 1920, the navy drew up its first fleet expansion programs. The initial plan
called for the construction of two battleships, six cruisers, 28 destroyers, 45 submarines,
and 28 minesweepers and auxiliaries. Additionally, the program required the construction
in Poland of four large monitors, 20 small ones, and 49 motorboats, as components of an
extensive river flotilla. The navy foresaw the completion of this amazing endeavor by
1929. This economically unfeasible plan quickly fell by the wayside and the navy
supplied a second proposal. This much less ambitious and patently more realistic
program included one cruiser, four destroyers, the six ex-German torpedo boats, two
submarines, and some smaller vessels. Poland’s poverty made this plan a dream as well.69
The failure of the navy’s ambitious schemes did not block naval expansion. The Polish
government wanted some type of coastal defense, at least of a limited nature, and tried to
buy warships abroad even before the conclusion of a peace treaty with the Soviet Union.
As early as 8 October 1920, the Polish Navy dispatched two officers to Finland,
Lieutenant Beretevitch and an engineer, Bielo Petrovich, under the pretext of purchasing
tugs. The true purpose of their mission was to strike a bargain for two Russian Karjala-
class torpedo boats. Additional efforts to buy Finnish patrol craft failed.70
The two officers also journeyed to Estonia and made an unsuccessful bid for Estonia’s
two Russian destroyers. Following this, Poland purchased four minesweepers from
Denmark, five river patrol boats from Austria, and a number of launches and tugs owned
by Polish citizens. The early 1920s saw the construction in Danzig of eight monitors for
the Vistula River flotilla.71
The acquisition of these new vessels, as well as military necessity, led to official
reorganization of the Polish Navy. In early April 1922, the navy was placed under the
direction of the Ministry of Military Affairs and divided into three divisions: the war
fleet, based initially at Puck, the Vistula flotilla, based at Torun, and the Pina flotilla, with
its anchorage at Pinsk. By 1924, the wartime strength of the Polish Navy was 50 armed
vessels of all types, mostly small craft of little significant military value, 12 auxiliary
vessels, and 36 speedboats.72
From early in its existence the Polish Navy benefited from the assistance of foreign
advisors. The help the Polish Army received from the French is well known, but few
know of the British and French naval missions to Poland. The Poles requested a British
naval mission in early 1919. It arrived in Poland in September at a time when the Poles
possessed no significant warships and no actual coastline. Negotiations for the sale of
British warships to Poland began in 1919, indicating the seriousness the Poles attached to
coastal defense, as well as the prestige derived from the existence of a navy. The British
government expressed a willingness to sell one light cruiser, four destroyers, and some
motor launches and coastal motor boats. No deal came from this due to the poor state of
Polish finances, but the efforts were a portent of things to come.73
The British naval mission, under the leadership of Commander Eric L.Wharton, RN,
worked with the Polish Navy and merchant marine. At the beginning of 1920, the
mission’s commissioned staff numbered five officers. The end of the year saw the five
become three, but with seven ratings to assist them. Autumn saw the mission’s scope
reduced as the British personnel received orders to concern themselves only with matters
directly related to the Polish Navy.74
Late 1920 brought complaints from the British Treasury about the expense of the
mission. The Treasury wanted to cut the mission’s funding and transfer its cost to the
Poles. Moreover, insisting that the mission only benefited Poland, they recommended its
withdrawal in three months’ time. A lack of willingness on the part of the British
government to provide the £7,800 necessary annually to maintain the mission, combined
with the poor state of Polish finances, resulted in its termination in early 1921.75
The Admiralty also objected to the Polish mission, as well as a similar request from
Romania. They held to this in spite of insistence from others regarding the potential
commercial benefits of such missions, as well as the experiences of their pre-First World
War mission to Greece.76 Later, the economic difficulties of the 1920s would force a
change in the Admiralty view.
The Foreign Office disagreed with both the Treasury and the Admiralty, and their
response shows one of the prime British motivations for dispatching such missions. Lord
Curzon insisted that the British naval mission was a means of offsetting French influence
in Poland. The French, for their part, viewed the British mission as a tool for British
economic expansion. Writing after the outbreak of the Second World War, Admiral
Swirski insisted that the British naval mission had instructions to interfere with the
development of naval affairs in Poland.77
Sir Horace Rumbold, the British Ambassador to Warsaw, believed that the mission’s
withdrawal would see the Poles turn to France for naval advice. He insisted that the
French would use a naval mission to dump obsolete warships on the Poles, as well as
encourage them to spend unnecessarily on their navy. Moreover, Rumbold believed

Britain needed the mission to help develop the Polish merchant marine, which had
originally been one of its tasks. He insisted that a merchant marine service was
indispensable to Poland’s economic strength and noted that in the near future large
numbers of British merchant shipping would be offered for sale. Maintaining good
relations and influence with the Poles would surely lead to ‘keeping open a lucrative field
for British commercial enterprise’.78
The remarks of Curzon and Rumbold demonstrate one of the hallmarks of British
policy in Poland and the rest of the eastern Baltic: economic interest. Both Britain and
France saw virtually every military and political measure they undertook in the region
through the lens of whether or not it increased their influence and weakened that of their
rival, and even more importantly, how this impacted economic penetration.
On this occasion, as on several others to follow, the policy concerns of the Foreign
Office lost to the economic determinations of the Treasury. Lord Curzon bowed to the
Treasury’s urgent pleas for the reduction of government expenditures and withdrew the
naval mission. It departed Poland on 15 January 1921, except for Commander Wharton,
who remained as Britain’s naval attaché to Poland and The Hague. Wharton remarked
that the moment chosen for the mission’s withdrawal was ‘most unfortunate’ as its work
was just beginning to take shape. Lord Curzon’s insistence that the British Mission
served as a means of influence soon became apparent. By late 1921, Commander
Wharton began warning his superiors about the decline in British influence over naval
affairs in Poland. Foreign Office officials deemed this ‘unfortunate’.79
The mission did help lay a foundation for Polish naval development. In late 1921,
Poland established a nautical college at Tezew to train future officers for the navy and
merchant marine. To serve as a school ship for the college the Poles purchased an old
schooner in Holland and re-christened it Łwow (960 tons). Poland, with British
assistance, retained Lieutenant-Commander T.Burton, RN, to command the ship and train
the boys who would provide the future cadre for the officer corps. Burton, who had
considerable experience with sailing ships and in training merchant marine cadets, took
the job to see what kind of sailors the Poles could become. Burton found the cadets
intelligent and promising, but found the majority of Polish officers with whom he worked
incompetent.80
The hiring of Burton proved a profitable choice for the Poles. The Łwow, already more
than 50 years old at the time of its purchase in 1921, suffered from extensive pitting in its
side plating because of its long service in the salt trade. It had also lost its masts during a
storm on its last voyage home. The result was that the ship was in dire need of a refit.
Before Burton’s arrival, the Poles had contracted a Dutch firm to do the work, but struck
a deal so disadvantageous that the price could have easily purchased a similar new ship.
Burton found this contract typical of those entered into by the Poles. Moreover, he
discovered the work on the Łwow proceeding so slowly that there seemed scant chance of
the ship ever leaving Holland. Burton took matters into his own hands and through a
process of what he termed ‘peaceful penetration’ waged a private campaign of contract
revision against the Dutch firms. He succeeded in having one pay 6,000 florins for
demurrage, exorcized all bribery attempts, and fought to insure the proper outfitting of
the ship. Burton worked with the Poles until February 1922, at which time the British
Treasury found it difficult to justify the expenses incurred in paying the salary of an
officer serving as a foreign instructor.81
In 1923, a French naval mission arrived in Poland under the command of Contre-
Amiral Charles Jolivet,82 marking the beginning of a long association between the navies
of Poland and France. The mission would exercise a grip upon Polish naval contracts that
the British would find difficult to break.
CONCLUSIONS
In many respects the initial naval development of the emerging states of the Baltic was
very similar. Their officers and men came from the merchant service, or from the former
German, Russian, and Austrian Navies. Their first vessels were a rag-tag, improvised
collection of craft pressed into emergency service during their wars of liberation, or
former German and Russian warships, taken over, or raised and repaired. The Latvians
and Poles also sought shares of the fleets of their former imperial masters. Only the Poles
proved successful in this, though considering the state of the vessels they acquired, it
might have been to their advantage to fail.
Moreover, the new states also tried, unsuccessfully, to buy or have given to them,
surplus ships of the victorious powers. Clearly, this was a missed opportunity for both
sides. Britain and France could have ceded excess ships in an effort to strengthen the
defenses of the cordon sanitaire, but they did not. Barring this, they could have sold them
at bargain prices, something much more amenable to the money managers in both Paris
and London during the tough economic period after the Great War. But they failed to do
this as well, which Chapter 3 examines.
The importance of missions in the eyes of both the sending and receiving powers
quickly becomes clear. Both powers believed that advisory missions provided the perfect
basis upon which to build naval influence. They could shape the emerging service in
ways that not only profited the new state, but more importantly, supported the political,
military, and economic strategies of the dispatching nation. Often, but not always,
missions and their heads, or individuals holding the position of naval advisor, would
prove instrumental in directing the course of naval development in the Baltic, and, what
became more important as the decade wore on—which nation won the potentially
lucrative orders.
By 1923, the foundations for initial spheres of naval influence in the region had been
poured. The Estonians and Finns joined arms with the British, while the Latvians and
Poles sought the advice of the French, though the Polish Navy got to Paris through the
foibles of the British Treasury. Fear of the Soviet Union, and the help the new nations
received in the course of their respective wars of liberation accounts for much of this.
None of these connections would prove as permanent, or as economically and politically
profitable, as Britain and France desired.
NOTES
1. Letter of Engineer Captain D.N.H.Bowen to his mother, 25 Dec. 1918, Bowen MSS, IWM;
Bennett, Cowan’s War, pp. 40–5.
2. Bowen to his mother, 25 Dec. 1918, Bowen MSS, IWM; Evald Uustala, The History of
Estonian People (London: Boreas, 1952), p. 169; Conway’s All the World’s Fighting Ships
1922–1946 (London: Conway’s Maritime Press, 1980), p. 415; Baltic Times, 19 Dec. 1938.
3. Uustala, Estonian People, pp. 169, 192; Edgars Andersons, ‘Die militärische Situation der
baltischen Staaten’, Acta Baltica (1969), p. 121; Conway’s 1906–1922, p. 415; Louis Tissot,
La Baltique: Situation des Pays Riverains de la Baltique, Importance Économique et
Strategique de la ‘Mediterranée du Nord’ (Paris: Payot, 1940), p. 70.
4. Goodden, ‘Short Handbook’, pp. 95–6; Commander J.E.P.Brass, ‘Diary of a War Cadet,
1914–1921’, p. 161, Brass MSS, IWM; G-2 report, 2 June 1922, file MID 2584–22–23,
United States, Military Intelligence Division, Correspondence of the Military Intelligence
Division Relating to General Political, Economic, and Military Conditions in Poland and the
Baltic States, 1918–1941, Record Group 165 (Washington, DC: Scholarly Resources, 1981,
microfilm) (henceforth PBS), roll 10; Davis to Secretary of State, 27 Apr. 1920, file 860p.34,
Records Relating to the Internal Affairs of the Baltic States, 1910–1944 (Washington, DC:
National Archives, 1981, microfilm) (henceforth IABS), roll 1; Uustala, Estonian People, pp.
169, 175.
5. Marruik to FO, 21 Apr. 1920, FO 371/3633; Stephen Roskill, Naval Policy Between the
Wars, 2 vols (London: Collins, 1968), Vol. I, The Period of Anglo-American Antagonism,
1919–1929, p. 150.
6. Gregory to Piip, 30 Apr. 1920, Gregory to Secretary of the Admiralty, 30 Apr. 1920, and FO
minute, FO 371/3633.
7. Baddely to FO, 19, 31, and 28 May, 1920, C.J.B. [Hurst?], FO minute, 25 May [1920], and
FO to Piip, 4 June and 30 July 1920, FO 371/3633; Vickers to Admiralty, 23 Mar. 1921, and
Director of Naval Contracts to Vickers, May 1921, FO 371/6734; Tallents to FO, 1 Oct.
1920, FO 371/5377.
8. Grove to Vaughan, 30 Apr. 1924, FO 371/10379; Dantziger Zeitung Schiffahrt, 16 May
[1924], cited in BIM no. 20, SHM, 1BB7 131 Pologne; Latvijas Karevis, 29 Apr. 1924, cited
in file 860p.34, IABS, roll 1.
9. Leslie to Curzon, 2 June 1920, and Littledale to British Consul, 28 May 1920, FO 371/3634.
10. Littledale to British Consul, 8 June 1920, Marrock to FO, 9 July 1920, and Harvey, FO
minute, n.d., FO 371/3611.
11. FO to Admiralty, 15 July 1920, FO 371/3611.
12. Piip to Palairet, 25 June 1920, and FO to Admiralty, 30 June 1920, FO 371/3634.
13. Baddely to FO, 19 July 1920, and Harvey, FO minute, 21 July [1920], FO 371/3634;
Marrock to FO, 9 July 1920, FO 371/3611.
14. Littledale to FO, 5 Aug. 1920, FO 371/3634.
15. Baddely to FO, 18 Aug. 1920, FO 371/3611; Tallents to Curzon, 7 Sept. 1920, and Gregory
to Leslie, 23 Sept. 1920, FO 371/3634; Champness to Carr, 15 July 1924, FO 371/10380.
16. R.B.Goodden, ‘Short Handbook’, pp. 95–6; Anatol Lieven, The Baltic Revolution: Estonia,
Latvia, Lithuania and the Path to Independence (New Haven, CT and London: Yale
University Press, 1993), p. 59; Jürg Meister, ‘Den Lettiska flottan 1918–1941’, Tidskrift i
sjöväsendet 137 (June 1974), 299.1 am grateful to Hege Carlson for translating this article.
17. Meister, ‘Den Lettiska flottan’, p. 299; Grosvald to MAE, 21 May 1920, AMAE, Lettonie
21.
18. Malovitz, Karjan, and Keyserling to Gade, 13 Apr. and 18 June 1920, file 860 p.34/-, and
Coontz to Secretary of State, 21 June 1920, file 860p.34/l, United States, Department of
State, Records Relating to the Internal Affairs of Latvia, 1910–1944 (Washington, DC:
National Archives, 1981, microfilm) (henceforth IAL), roll 4.
19. Young to Secretary of State, 30 July 1920, file 860p.34/2, no. 83, E.L.P.[?] to Division of
Russian Affairs, 14 Sept. 1920, file 860p. doc. 2A, and Adee to Young, n.d., file 860p.34/2,
IAL, roll 4.
20. Chase, Lithuania, pp. 265, 268; Conway’s 1922–1946, p. 354; Andersons, ‘Die militärische
Situation’, p. 147.
21. Chase, Lithuania, p. 287; Thorsten V.Kalijarvi, The Memel Statute: Its Origin, Legal
Nature, and Observation to the Present Day (London, 1937), pp. 52–3, 58–9.
22. Zivilè Kriauciunienè, ‘Contacts politiques et culturels Franco-Lituaniens en 1918–1920’,
Journal of Baltic Studies 26 (Spring, 1995), 60–1; Julien Gueslin, ‘La France et les pays
baltes de 1918 a 1923’ (MA thesis, Sorbonne, 1996), pp. 90–1, 95.
23. Kriauciunienè, ‘Contacts politiques et culturels’, p. 61; Gueslin, ‘La France et les pays
baltes’, p. 94.
24. Chase, Lithuania, pp. 287–8; Kalijarvi, Memel Statute, p. 61; Gueslin, ‘La France et les pays
baltes’, p. 175.
25. Chase, Lithuania, pp. 287–8; Peltier, ‘Souvenirs’, p. 1125; Kalijarvi, Memel Statute, pp. 68–
9; Jürg Meister, ‘Kurze Geschichte der Lituaischen Marine’, Marine Rundschau 73 (Sept.
1976), 767; Le May to Curzon, 16 Jan. 1923, DBFP, ser. 1, Vol. 23, p. 676. The sources
disagree on the number of French troops.
26. Crewe to Curzon, 13 and 15 Jan. 1923, DBFP, ser. 1, Vol. 23, pp. 667, 675–6; Vaughan to
Curzon, 16 Jan. 1923, ibid., p. 678; North to Admiralty, 20 Jan. 1923, ibid., p. 687.
27. Chase, Lithuania, pp. 288–9; Gueslin, ‘La France et les pays baltes’, pp. 175–8.
28. Niblack to Naval War College, 4 June 1919, file MID 236–2/44, United States, Department
of State, Correspondence of the Military Intelligence Division Relating to General, Political,
Economic and Military Conditions in Scandinavia and Finland, 1918–1914 (Washington,
DC: National Archives, 1981, microfilm) (henceforth MSF), roll 11; Niblack to General
Board MID, file MID 236–2/31, MSF, roll 11; report no. 103, 14 Sept. 1920, and Biffaud
report no. 97, 1 Sept. 1920, SHM, 1BB7 125 Finlande; Anderson, ‘An Undeclared Naval
War’, p. 53; Juha Tikka, ‘Die Finnische Marine—70 Jahre jung’, Marine Rundschau 82
(May-June 1985), 130–1; Sune Jungar, Finländare i Ryssland: Utflyttningen till Ryssland,
1809–1917. En för studie kring källmaterial och problematik (Åbo: Åbo Akademi Historiska
Institutionen Meddelanden, 1972), p. 117.
29. Biffaud report no. 97, 1 Sept. 1920, SHM, 1BB7 125 Finlande; Anderson, ‘An Undeclared
Naval War’, p. 53; Per-Olof Ekman, ‘Finlands flotta tre årtionden’, Tidskrift i sjöväsendet 77
(1954), 570–1.
30. Izvestia, no. 85, 12 Apr. 1924, cited in ‘Mission Navale Française en Pologne’, 30 Sept.
1924, SHM, 1BB7 131 Pologne; Biffaud report no. 97, 1 Sept. 1920, SHM, 1BB7 125
Finlande; letter from Commodore Erik Wihtol to the author, 21 May 1996; de Courcy-
Ireland, A Naval Life, p. 61; Vice-Admiral Sir Thomas Troubridge, 17 Aug. 1937, The 1936–
1939 Diaries of Vice-Admiral Sir Thomas Troubridge (hereafter Troubridge Diaries), IWM.
31. ‘Note sur la Marine Finlandaise’, 1 June 1920, SHM, 1BB7 Finlande 125.
32. Wihtol, ‘La pensée navale finlandaise’, pp. 218–20; ‘Chronique des marines française et
étrangères: Finlande’, La Revue Maritime (Aug. 1921), 126; d’Ythurbide, 9 Nov. 1920,
SHM, 1BB7 125 Finlande.
33. Long to Curzon, Aug. 1919, WO 106/627.
34. Ibid.
35. Curzon to Kennard, 24 Oct. 1919, WO 106/627.
36. Scale to DMI, Nov. 1919, WO 106/627.
37. Brigadier General DDMI to Scale, Jan. 1920, WO 106/627.
38. ‘Note sur la Marine Finlandaise’, 1 June 1920, SHM, 1BB7 125 Finlande.
39. Ibid.; Biffaud report no. 97, 1 Sept. 1920, SHM, 1BB7 125 Finlande.
40. Biffaud, 17 Aug. 1920, SHM, 1BB7 125 Finlande.
41. Ibid.
42. Ibid.; Tôrngren to Pichon, 29 Apr. and 8 June 1919, MAE to MM, stamped 3 May 1919,
[MAE?] to Tôrngren, stamped 29 June 1919, and Faramond to MAE, 5 July 1919, AMAE
Finlande 11; Holsti Memoirs, ‘Present Political Situation in Northern Europe’, Holsti Papers,
Hoover Institute, Stanford.
43. Faramond to MAE, 20 July 1919, AMAE, Finlande 11.
44. Biffaud, 17 Aug. 1920, SHM, 1BB7 125 Finlande.
45. Annual Report on Finland for 1921, 14 Feb. 1920, FO 371/8100; letters from Commodore
Erik Wihtol to the author, 5 Feb. and 10 Apr. 1996; email from Annette Forsén to the author,
28 Sept. 2000.
46. Wihtol, ‘La pensée navale finlandaise’, p. 217; General Wilkama to Chef d’EMG, n.d., and
voluminous correspondence between Biffaud and the Naval Minister on training, SHM,
1BB7 125 Finlande.
47. MAE to MM, 12 Sept. 1919, AMAE, Finlande 11.
48. Fabre to MAE, 14 Jan. 1920, ‘Renseignement de Finlande: Activité des Allemands en
Finlande’, stamped 18 Dec. 1920, Herbette to MAE, 3 Nov. 1921, ‘Renseignement: Activité
des Allemands’, 11 Sept. 1921, and ‘La fabrique d’aeroplanes de Sandholm’, 16 Sept. 1922,
AMAE, Finlande 9.
49. Salaün to MAE, 31 May 1920, AMAE, Finlande 11.
50. Wihtol, ‘La pensée navale finlandaise’, p. 217; Vennin, 23 Sept. 1923, BIM no. 19, SHM,
1BB7 128 Lettonie; correspondence on training in FO 371/8102.
51. Wihtol, ‘La pensée navale finlandaise’, pp. 220–1; Martti Turtola, ‘Aspects of Finnish-
Estonian Military Relations in the 20s and 30s’, in John Hiden and Aleksander Loit (eds),
The Baltic in International Relations Between the Two World Wars. Acta Universitatis
Stockholmiensia 3. Studia Baltica Stockholmiensis (Stockholm: Center for Baltic Studies,
1986), p. 103.
52. FO to Cabinet, 4 Dec. 1920, Ashwood to FO, 11 Dec. 1920, and Hankey to Balfour, 14 Dec.
1920, FO 371/5389; Gregory to Donner, 5 Jan. 1921, FO 371/6766; League of Nations
Report, ‘Admission of the Republic of Finland into the League of Nations’, 18 Nov. 1920,
FO 371/5389; League of Nations—Official Journal 8 (Nov.-Dec. 1920), 35, 40, 42.
53. Fabre to MAE, 9 Dec. 1920, AMAE, Finlande 10; Kidston to FO, 4 Dec. 1920, and Kidston
to Curzon, 6 Dec. 1920, FO 371/5389.
54. Kidston to Curzon, 6 Dec. 1920, FO 371/5389.
55. Roskill, Naval Policy, Vol. I, p. 92; Flint to FO, 8 Dec. 1920, FO 371/5389.
56. Roskill, Naval Policy, Vol. I, p. 92; FO minute, FO 371/5389; Gregory to Donner, 5 Jan.
1921, Admiralty to FO, 8 Aug. 1921, and Ashwood, FO minute, 24 Aug. 1921, FO
371/6766; Fabre to MAE, 13 Feb. 1921, AMAE, Finlande 10.
57. Kidston to Curzon, 5 Nov. 1920, FO 371/5389.
58. Ibid.; FO minute, 22 and 24 Nov. 1920, FO 371/5389; FO to Kidston, 3 Nov. 1920, Kidston
to FO, 3 Nov. 1920, and FO to Leslie, 4 Nov. 1920, FO 371/5427; Admiralty to SNO Baltic,
29 Oct. 1920, FO 371/5428.
59. Admiralty to FO, 25 Dec. 1920, Gregory to Donner, 1 Dec. 1920, and Stevenson, FO
minute, 26 Nov. 1920, FO 371/5388; Donner to FO, 6 Jan. 1921, FO 371/6766.
60. Gregory to Donner, 5 Mar. 1921, and Donner to FO, 12 Apr. 1921, FO 371/6766; Annual
Report on Finland for 1921, 14 Feb. 1922, FO 371/8100; Cowan to Keyes, 5 Sept. 1919, in
Paul G.Halpern (ed.), The Keyes Papers: Selections from the Private and Official
Correspondence of the Fleet Baron Keyes of Zeebrugge, 3 vols (London: George Allen &
Unwin, 1980), Vol. II, p. 43.
61. J.Unrug, ‘Wie die polnische Kriegsflotte entstanden ist 1918–1939’, Marine Rundschau 64
(Aug. 1966), 199; Rear-Admiral Jerzy Swirski, 14 May 1919, file MAR A II 1/7, Polish
Institute and Sikorski Museum (hereafter PISM), London; M.A.Peszke, Poland’s Navy,
1918–1945 (New York: Hippocrene, 1999), p. 14.
62. Unrug, ‘Wie die polnische Kriegsflotte entstanden ist’, pp. 199–200; Conway’s 1906–1921,
p. 419; Meister, ‘Die polnischen Flußflottillen’, pp. 230–9; Oskar Halecki, A History of
Poland, 3rd edn (New York: Roy Publishers, 1961), pp. 286–7.
63. Henryk Baginski, Poland’s Freedom of the Sea (Kirkaldy: Allen Lithographic, 1942), p. 98;
Conway’s 1906–1922, p. 419.
64. Curzon to Derby, 3 Feb. 1920, DBFP, ser. 1, Vol. 11, p. 209.
65. Baginski, Poland’s Freedom, p. 9; Vennin to MM, 26 June 1923, SHM, 1BB7 132 Pologne;
Conway’s 1906–1922, p. 419; Unrug, ‘Wie die polnische Kriegsflotte entstanden ist’, p. 200;
Koziki to Peace Conference, 24 Dec. 1919, AMAE, Pologne 42.
66. Polish Legation to FO, 10 Sept. 1921, FO 371/6839; Vennin to MM, SHM, 1BB7 128
Lettonie.
67. Admiralty to FO, 25 Aug. 1921, Flint to FO, 19 September 1921, FO minute, 20 Sept.
[1921], DNI to FO, 30 May 1921, and Walker to FO, 16 Sept. 1921, FO 371/6839; Wharton,
‘Report on the Polish Navy and Mercantile Marine’ hereafter ‘Wharton Report’, 15 Nov.
1921, FO 371/6842.
68. Conway’s 1906–1922, p. 419.
69. Ibid., 419–20.
70. D’Ythurbide, 26 Oct. 1920, and ‘Note sur la Marine Finlandaise’, 18 Dec. 1920, SHM,
1BB7 125 Finlande; Conway’s 1906–1922, p. 419; Baginski, Poland’s Freedom, p. 99.
71. ‘Note sur la Marine Finlandaise’, 18 Dec. 1920, SHM, 1BB7 125 Finlande; Conway’s 1906–
1922, p. 419; s.i., French Minister Poland to MAE, 28 Mar. 1920, AMAE, Pologne 42.
72. ‘Fortifications—Bases’, 28 Jan. 1924, BIM no. 5, ‘Flotte de guerre polonaise’, 28 Jan. 1924,
BIM no. 5, and Ministère et Haut Commandant Pologne, 28 Jan. 1924, BIM no. 5, SHM,
1BB7 131 Pologne.
73. Curzon to Howard, 19 Mar. 1919, FO 371/3898; ‘Wharton Report’, 15 Nov. 1921, FO
371/6842.
74. Poland: Annual Report, 1920,18 Mar. 1922, FO 371/8143; Flint to FO, 29 Sept. 1920, FO
371/5411.
75. Barstow to FO, 15 Oct. 1920, and Flint to FO, 29 Sept. 1920, FO 371/5411; Crookshank,
‘Memorandum on Polish Affairs, 1919–1921’, 13 June 1921, in Kenneth Bourne et al. (eds),
British Documents on Foreign Affairs: Reports and Papers from the Foreign Office
Confidential Print (Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1996) (hereafter
BDFA), pt. II, ser. F, Vol. 52, p. 194.
76. Bell, Royal Navy, pp. 153–5.
77. FO to Admiralty, 4 Dec. 1920, FO 371/5411; Pralon to MAE, 15 Sept. 1919, AMAE,
Pologne 116; Swirski, ‘Plany I Zamierzenia Rozbudowy Marynarki Wojennej w Okresie
1920–1926’ (hereafter ‘Plany’), MAR AII 7/7, Swirski Papers, PISM.
78. Rumbold to Curzon, 30 Mar. 1920, in DBFP, ser. 1, Vol. 11, pp. 271–2.
79. Gregory to Treasury, 4 Dec. 1920, Admiralty to FO, 15 Dec. 1920, and FO to Lorraine, 20
Dec. 1920, FO 371/5411; Poland: Annual Report, 1920, 18 Mar. 1920, FO 371/8143; Muller
to Curzon, 15 Nov. 1921, FO minute, 21 Nov. 1921, and Wharton to Charge d’Affaires, 10
Dec. 1920, FO 371/6842.
80. ‘Wharton Report’, 15 Nov. 1921, FO 371/6842; Wharton to Graham[?], 19 July 1921, FO
371/6807; ‘Chronique des Marines française et étrangères—Pologne—Marine de guerre’,
Revue Maritime (Nov. 1921), 702–3.
81. Wharton to Graham[?], 16 July 1921, FO 371/6807; ‘Wharton Report’, 15 Nov. 1921, FO
371/6842.
82. ‘Rapport de fin de la Mission Navale Française en Pologne’, 20 July 1932, SHM, 1BB7 132
Pologne.
3
Unintended Consequences: The Effects of the
Washington Naval Treaties on the Baltic
The Washington Naval Conference opened on 12 November 1921. The meeting of

former Entente powers, Great Britain, France, Italy, Japan, and the United States,
produced a ten-year moratorium on the construction of battleships. Moreover, it limited
Great Power competition in the construction of the largest classes of warships, and
restricted the building of some, and sales of all smaller types. It also laid the groundwork
for appeasement.1
The conference accords also became the foundation for much of British naval strategy
between the wars. At Washington, Britain bet its naval security on multilateral naval
treaties, a practice continued until shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War.2
The French Navy hated Washington, and the similar agreements that followed. At the
conference, no nation fought Britain more than France. The French Navy was rife with
Anglophobia, suspicious of Britain in general, and thoroughly imbued with the awareness
that France’s true enemy was ‘Perfidious Albion’. The Washington Treaties only served
to affirm these views. Paris particularly disliked British efforts to ban submarines and
limit aircraft, and successfully resisted these gambits. Most galling to the French Navy
was France’s parity with Italy in capital ships. The French saw this as a prestige blow
because it equated France with Italy and humiliated the French by awarding Paris a
building ceiling lower than Washington, London, and Tokyo. Moreover, the building
restrictions flew in the face of French naval strategy. The French Navy planned for a war
against Italy and Germany, without the assistance of Great Britain. To the French, they
needed to maintain a ‘two-power standard’ based upon the size of the German and Italian
fleets. As long as Versailles kept the German Navy limited, and Germany did not build,
the Washington limits would have no substantial effect on planning. But if Germany did
expand its fleet, then, in France’s eyes, the ratios became dangerous and risked leaving
Paris with insufficient naval power to cover its sea lines of communications, which was
critical to its grand strategy.3
The Washington Conference also had other unintended effects, particularly in regards
to small states. The emerging Baltic nations had to look abroad for much of their
armaments, especially complex technical items such as warships. The Washington
accords became a serious and unexpected obstacle to plans for naval development in the
Baltic.
FINLAND
In early November 1920, the Finnish government approached Great Britain to buy a
number of warships. Destroyers played a prominent role in what Finland wanted because
of their important position in Helsinki’s coastal defense plans.4 Finland’s struggle to
acquire a destroyer force became a complex and time-consuming procedure. It was not
until 23 March 1921, nearly five months after Finland’s initial request, that the Admiralty
replied. The Royal Navy agreed to sell to the Finns as long as they did not want
submarines and gave guarantees that the strength of their navy would not exceed the
League of Nations limits. As for payment, the Admiralty asked only for an initial advance
covering the scrap value of the ships, payable at the time of transfer, with the balance
paid in installments. Unfortunately for the Finns, the Treasury disliked the Admiralty’s
plans. Problems with the British Treasury caused nearly a four-month delay in the
dispatch of the ship prices and produced a change in payment conditions. Finally, the
British offered flotilla leaders of the Marksman class for £8,000 each and destroyers of
the M and earlier classes at £4,000. They demanded payment in cash, the Treasury
refusing to grant any terms.5
Negotiations for the vessels continued, albeit slowly. In late August 1921, the British
agreed to sell two M-class destroyers. At this point, the Finns dragged their feet in
replying, deciding only on 19 October 1921 that they wanted to buy six M-class
destroyers. Two months later the Admiralty replied, and at first glance their answer
appeared to present no difficulties, but only at first glance. The Admiralty offered six M-
class destroyers: Llewellyn, Lurcher, Lysander, Lark, Lawford, and Lookout. The price,
£8,000, was indeed a bargain since the original construction cost of an L-class vessel was
£120,910.6
The Admiralty error did not go unnoticed. Three days later, a Foreign Office official
commented that the offered destroyers were apparently of the L class because their names
began with the letter ‘L’. He stated that the Finns had been ‘deceived’ and recorded that
the Admiralty had unofficially admitted that while one department was adding up the
value of the M class ships, their guns, and fittings, another department had sold the
vessels for scrap. The Foreign Office branded the Admiralty response ‘unbusinesslike’
and told the Finns that they could inspect the available L class vessels. The Finns, eager
to conclude the sale, quickly dispatched the head of the Finnish Navy, Commodore von
Schoultz, and a civil engineer.7
While the Finnish inspection team made its way from Helsinki to London, the
progress of the Washington Naval talks killed the deal. The Washington Treaties allowed
signatories to construct new ships for foreign powers, but forbade the sale of existing
vessels. Sir Ernest Rennie, the British representative in Finland, described this dichotomy
as ‘absurd’. The angry diplomat complained that the Admiralty should have notified the
Helsinki legation that the Washington naval discussions made the sale to Finland less
than certain, thus allowing Rennie to stop the Finns before they sent their inspectors. The
British government, though anxious to sell the ships, believed the negotiations for the
Washington accords too far advanced to allow the purchase. For the British, it became a
Unintended consequences 43
point of honor to cancel the sale. The Finns were not the only disappointed buyers as
Britain also broke off agreements with Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela.8
Undaunted by the deal’s sudden collapse, the Finns searched for ways to get around
the Treaty. They tried to acquire the machinery of some of the destroyers before the
ratification of the Washington accords, then offered to buy the ships with a guarantee that
they would break them up in Finland, presumably to obtain their aforementioned
components. Neither the Admiralty nor the Foreign Office believed that the Washington
Treaties precluded the sale of machinery from vessels being dismantled. As a result, the
Admiralty agreed to consider selling the destroyers for breaking-up, if the work was done
by British labor in British yards.9
Finnish interest in purchasing only the machinery quickly subsided. By the end of
March 1922 they had mounted another effort to bring about the sale of the once-promised
destroyers. The Finns argued that since the vessels had been offered to Finland prior to
the Washington Conference, and this offer was confirmed while the Conference still sat,
the sale should go through. To strengthen their case the Finns stressed their dire need for
the ships, stating that the current vessels of the Finnish Navy had ‘no military value’, an
assessment not far from the truth. The Finns also insisted that if the sale did not occur,
Finland would be forced to purchase vessels elsewhere ‘at far greater cost’. The British
remained unmoved and refused to accede to the Finnish request because of the
Washington Naval Treaties.10
The Finns kept trying. Rennie, under pressure from Dr Rudolf Holsti and other
prominent Finnish officials, once again presented Finland’s situation to the Foreign
Office. He attempted to lay blame for the entire debacle at Helsinki’s feet, writing that
the Finns ‘should have pushed the matter more energetically in the autumn…but they let
the opportunity slip’.11 Rennie would have been more justified in leveling criticism at the
Admiralty.
Holsti next approached the British and French governments, asking them as a special
favor to Finland to let Britain sell the ships because the deal had been agreed to before
the treaties were signed. As an added incentive for British cooperation, the Finnish
Minister of War mentioned that if the Finns could obtain the destroyers they also wanted
British naval instructors. This appealed to Rennie. He believed he had been handed an
excellent opportunity and saw the suggestion as a means of countering what the British
saw as pro-German feelings among ‘certain [Finnish] military circles’. Moreover, Rennie
feared that the pro-German faction in Finland would use the failure of the sale to cast the
British in an unfavorable light.12
The Finns soon broadened the scope of their plan to get a naval dispensation from the
self-proclaimed overlords of naval armament. They not only approached the government
of France, but also contacted the representatives of Italy, Japan, and the United States,
asking each to grant a special exception regarding Finland. The Foreign Office helped
derail the gambit by making it clear to their representatives in Paris, Washington, Rome,
and Tokyo that no exception was possible. The British believed that one such allowance
would lead to many others, the result proving injurious to British policy.13
As part of their plan to get around the British refusal, the Finnish Minister to
Washington told the US Secretary of State that Britain would sell the destroyers if the
Americans had no objections. Obviously, this was not quite Britain’s opinion on the
matter. The Finns purposely misrepresented the British stance in the hope of winning
American support for their dilemma, and it helped them not at all. The United States
insisted that the relaxation of one provision would certainly produce others, resulting in
nullification of the Washington accords.14
Not surprisingly, the British government was unhappy with the Finns’ activities in
Washington. Three weeks later, Holsti told Rennie that the United States had agreed to
reopen negotiations on the matter if there were no objections from the French and Italian
governments. Foreign Office officials speculated that Holsti’s comment arose from faulty
information from Finland’s Washington officials. Donner believed that Finland’s
Minister in Rome had probably misinterpreted Italian politeness as a promise that Rome
would give way if Washington agreed to Finland’s request.15
The Finns had no success in revising Britain’s policy and related the same story on
Britain’s attitude to the French that they had to the Americans, with the same lack of
result. The Italians and the Japanese also agreed with the British about exceptions to the
Treaty. On 23 August 1922 the Foreign Office told the Finns that all of the Allies were in
agreement and gave their regrets that they could pursue the matter no more.16
When the League of Nations enacted the Washington convention the Finnish
government used the event to publicize its opposition. They insisted that the accords
could not be applied to Finland because it was building a coastal defense force, not a war
fleet, and complained that the convention gave no guarantees to small states. Sweden had
previously lodged similar protests.17
The early naval arms sales negotiations between Finland and Great Britain resulted in
reams of documents and hurt feelings. British inefficiency and the negotiation of the
Washington Naval Treaties combined to rob Finland of warships vital and well suited to
its defense—and that were available at a very reasonable price. This could have been
averted by more efficient action on the part of Great Britain, particularly the Admiralty,
which took an inordinate amount of time to respond to Finland’s inquiries. Prompt
Admiralty action would have produced an agreement on the destroyers beneficial to both
parties. Finland would have obtained the vessels it needed, while Britain gained not only
from the sale, but also from the influence that might follow. Moreover, British officials
should have looked with more interest upon Finnish suggestions that naval advisors
might be needed for the ships. In the years to come, Britain would labor diligently to
place just such an individual in Helsinki. They missed an early opportunity to perhaps
accomplish this goal. The presence of such an officer might have enabled the British to
hinder, or possibly even prevent, the later extensive German use of the Finnish Navy for
its clandestine rearmament program. Britain can hardly be faulted for honorably sticking
to the provisions of the Washington agreements once they had been concluded, and
Finnish actions in this matter, though clearly showing the small nation’s policy
independence, left much to be desired, but this entire situation could have been avoided if
the Admiralty had acted in a timely manner.
Moreover, Britain’s failure to approve the sale of the destroyers resulted in the
collapse of support in the Finnish Parliament for the passage of a naval bill based upon
the naval program of March 1920. The foundation stones of this plan had been the four
destroyers Finland wanted from Great Britain. Helsinki’s failure to acquire them led the
Finnish parliament to vote down the bill.18 This left Finland without a naval program and
destroyed its best hope for one’s passage. The next five years would see several failed
attempts to obtain Parliament’s grace for a successor. Decisive British action would have
prevented this.
In April 1922, Rennie expressed his fear that failure to complete the sale would help
the pro-German factions in Finland.19 The Foreign Office, as well as French officials,
worried about the growth of German influence in Finland throughout the interwar period.
Yet, their actions and attitudes often provided fertile ground for the growth of such
influence, which already existed in some measure because of the geographical, cultural,
and historical ties between Finland and Germany. Rennie’s alarm proved premature, but
only slightly so. The Finns continued to maintain close relations with Great Britain,
especially in the period immediately following the collapse of the destroyer deal. But it
was to Finland’s advantage to do so, and indeed, necessary. No other power could act as
a weight against possible Soviet aggression, always a fear in the Baltic—at least not yet.
This would change in the 1930s. Moreover, Germany could not provide Finland with any
military assistance because of the Treaty of Versailles, unless, of course, a way could be
found around its restrictions. This would change as well, and much sooner than anyone
expected.
LATVIA
In October 1920, the League of Nations, as part of the terms for Latvia’s admission, ruled
that Riga could maintain a fleet of no more than four submarines, four destroyers of
1,500 tons (Latvia had originally requested eight), 1,500 mines, and a ‘necessary’, but
undefined, number of seaplanes. Earlier, the Latvian government had considered a
scheme for the raising and refitting of an old Russian submarine scuttled by its crew in
Libau in 1914, as well as the refitting of the old Russian armored cruiser Gromboi, which
was sold by the Soviet government as scrap and ended up on the Latvian coast for a short
time. Nothing came of these plans and the Latvians looked abroad.20
On 12 February 1922, the Latvians inquired informally about purchasing submarines
from the Electric Boat Company. Secretary of State Charles E.Hughes commented that
this was a private contractual matter, but that the United States ‘cannot favor the
proposed transaction’.21
Despite the lack of official American approval for their actions, the Latvian
government continued trying to purchase US warships, but the Washington Disarmament
Treaties proved a stumbling block. The United States Department of State initially
believed that the sale of submarines of less than 10,000 tons (certainly a very large
submarine for the day) would be admissible under the terms of the Naval Limitation
Treaty. But, the new Secretary of the Navy, Edwin Denby, wrote that in order to comply
with the provisions of Article XVIII of the Treaty for the Limitation of Armaments, all
submarines had been removed from existing sales lists. Later, Hughes ruled that Article
XVIII probably did not apply to Latvia because it had never possessed any submarines.22
The Latvian government tried to avoid the machinations of American bureaucrats by
going directly to the Electric Boat Company, but this did not end the US government’s
interest in the matter. Denby insisted that Latvia could purchase submarines from Great
Britain at prices much lower than those in the United States, delivery costs alone making
the acquisition of US vessels more expensive. He concluded from this, without presenting
any evidence on the matter, that the British had already refused any Latvian requests, or
that the Latvian inquiries were merely for the purpose of obtaining prices for comparison
with those of other nations.23 It is doubtful that the Latvians ever contacted the British
government about purchasing submarines during this time.
Denby argued strongly against Latvian acquisition of US-built submarines, as well as
the purchase of such vessels by ‘any other of the artificially created states bordering the
Baltic’. Admitting that it ‘may be the wildest of nightmares’, Denby wrote that Lenin
might turn the Red Army against the West, overrun the Baltic States, Poland,
Czechoslovakia, Germany, and possibly the other states of the former Austro-Hungarian
Empire. This would then leave the Soviet Union in the same position as Imperial
Germany. Lenin would hold sway over the continent ‘with almost invincible forces’ and
then make his attacks against Britain by the use of submarines. Any such vessels
provided to Latvia would, according to Denby, end up in communist hands and enable
the Bolsheviks to more effectively prosecute a war with Great Britain. He concluded that
the United States should not allow private manufacturers to supply submarines to ‘the
little children of the League of Nations’ which could be ‘wrenched from them in case of
trouble with another power of great strength’ such as the Soviet Union. Members of the
State Department felt that Secretary of the Navy Denby was ‘perhaps too apprehensive’
about the possible fate of submarines acquired by Latvia.24
Denby argued against the sale on other grounds as well. Though he eventually advised
taking the stand that the US government did not object to the sale, he stated that it was
‘quite possible that with the Arms Conference in mind and the general opprobrium
attaching to submarines, the Secretary might not care to put the administration in the
position of furthering this business in any way’. Denby believed that the Secretary of
State was also ‘apparently of that mind’.25
Initially, the US military attaché in Riga, Major (later Colonel) Thomas W.Hollyday,
also opposed the sale. He condemned it as an ‘unwise extravagance’ on the part of
Latvia, but then decided that the Latvian government should have two or three
submarines for the protection of Windau and the entrance to the Dvina River. D.C. Poole,
of the State Department’s Division of Russian Affairs, summed up American policy
objections: the Latvians were poor and should not spend their money buying ships, and
the submarines might eventually fall into the hands of the Bolsheviks.26
Some officials in the State Department agreed that the United States should not
encourage private manufacturers to provide the Latvians with submarines. But they also
feared that the contracts might go to another power, specifically Great Britain. The State
Department admitted that it had no legal right to prevent such a sale and recorded that
‘Congress recently expressed its attitude in regard to the shipment of arms under certain
circumstances only to countries where we have extraterritorial rights.’ In April 1922,
Secretary of State Hughes ended the matter: ‘While it is recognized to be a matter of
private contract, this Government cannot favor the proposed purchase.’27 After all of this,
no sale occurred.
While the Latvians negotiated with the Americans, they also carried on talks with the
French. Eager to build a foundation for capturing future Latvian naval orders, the French
proposed ceding a number of small, obsolete naval vessels to Latvia, among them the
destroyer Hussard. The French Navy agreed, but attached the condition that future
Latvian naval orders had to go to French industry. There was also another catch: the
Latvians would have to pay 300,000 francs to put the vessel in a useable state.28
The offer did not stay open long. The tender was withdrawn nearly as soon as it was
made, partially because of concerns over its legality under the terms of the Washington
Treaties. The French Foreign Ministry though, still wanted to know if the Latvians would
have accepted the deal. They would have. The cession of the ships to Latvia would have
cinched the future sales related to the Latvian naval program, but the French were not
allowed to close the deal.29 Again, the Washington Treaties blocked the efforts of a small
nation to provide for its defense.
POLAND
Poland also found its efforts at naval building hindered by the provisions of the Treaties.
In late 1924, the Poles asked the British government about purchasing several destroyers
and submarines. The British refused, citing the Washington agreements.30
Fortunately for the Poles, the French did not interpret the agreements as strictly. On 18
June 1923, the Poles began negotiations with France for the obsolete cruiser Desaix, an
old vessel that had been decommissioned and disarmed. Poland wanted the cruiser for a
training vessel and school ship, and had no intention of rearming the craft or of even
making it seaworthy, and planned to permanently moor it in Gdynia.31
The French Navy initially recommended permanently lending the vessel to the Poles,
who would only have to pay the costs associated with putting it into serviceable condition
and moving it to Poland. At some point in the bureaucratic process, the navy’s intention
to lend the Desaix for an unlimited amount of time transformed into ceding the ship. In
March 1924, the French Foreign Minister agreed to the cession of the vessel, as long as
this did not violate the Washington accords. By early 1925, the Naval Ministry wanted
the Poles to pay the value of the hull because France was now giving the ship to Poland,
and not merely lending it, as had been done in the case of Belgium.32
As the matter dragged on the French began to worry. Borel, the French Naval
Minister, feared that appearing hard to please might generate discontent in France’s ally.
While Admiral Charles Jolivet, the head of the French naval mission to Poland, insisted
that resolving the situation was important because of the potential of sales related to the
impending Polish naval program.33
June 1925 saw inter-ministerial conferences to resolve the issue. Eventually, the
ministers passed the franc, so to speak, concluding that the parliament had to approve
ceding the ship to the Poles. The government had no desire to put the matter to the
Chamber, and as a result, the French floated a number of other proposals.34
Continued inquiries on the part of the Polish government failed to bring quick French
action. As the matter dragged on, the Poles began to grow suspicious, as well as fearful
that France might link cession of the Desaix to Poland’s plans to purchase several
submarines and minesweepers from foreign builders.35
The issue was finally decided in July 1926. The Poles agreed to pay 1,200,000 francs
for the hull, and an additional 2,420,000 francs to refit the Desaix and tow it to Gdynia.
The money for the purchase price came from French credits granted to Poland. By
August 1926, the issue appeared resolved.36 It was not.
To British officials the deal appeared a clear violation of Article XVIII of the
Washington Naval Treaty. The Foreign Office was initially unsure about what course of
action to take on the matter. They not only feared being the first to raise objections to the
sale, but also being the only protester. The Foreign Office decided that the best course of
action would be to send an aide-mémoire on the subject to the Americans. The US State
Department queried the French, who replied that negotiations on the matter were still
‘ongoing’ and that no definite decision had yet been reached—comments the Americans
relayed to London.37
The obvious question is this: how could a deal resolved in the summer of 1926 still be
‘ongoing’ at the time of a January 1927 inquiry? After waiting some three years for the
French to decide the fate of the Desaix, the Poles had asked if France would give them
the d’Entrecasteaux instead. This second ship, recently returned by the Belgians after
four years of use, was in much better condition than the Desaix, and moored in
Cherbourg rather than Toulon. The French saw nothing but advantages in meeting the
Polish request and moved with bureaucratic speed to satisfy their ally. The Poles agreed
to pay 1,622,745 francs for the vessel, its fittings, and towing it to Gdynia.38
After deciding to sell the d’Entrecasteaux, the French, to abide by the Washington
Treaties, notified the other signatories. By this time the British had tired of the matter and
preferred to let it die quietly. A Foreign Office official remarked: ‘if there’s any question
about this the US can raise it.’39 The Poles renamed the ship Baltyk.
ESTONIA
In April 1923, Prime Minister Pusta approached France about ceding some submarines
being decommissioned. The French Naval Minister quickly killed the matter, ruling that
such a sale would violate Article XVII of the Washington Treaties.40
Three years later, in February 1926, the Estonian government looked to Great Britain
in an effort to secure two sloops or minesweepers. The Foreign Office warned that the
Washington agreements might make a sale impossible, while the Estonians argued that
the vessels were not ‘Vessels of war’ in the Washington sense. Nevertheless, the Foreign
Office refused to act on the matter before consulting the Admiralty. The latter insisted
that Article XVIII prevented the signatories from disposing of vessels, either by gift or
sale, that could be used as warships. The United States government had already brought
this to the attention of the British when the Admiralty sold a minesweeping sloop to
British ship builder Thornycroft. The British firm had then resold it to the Siamese
government with the stipulation that it not be converted into a warship. The sale to
Estonia did not go through.41
CONCLUSIONS
Britain, France, and the United States each reacted differently to the situation arising
from the Washington agreements. The British interpreted the treaties very strictly,
producing difficulties for Finland, Poland, and Estonia, whereas the United States used
the treaties to discourage sales that it believed should not occur. The French took not so
rigid a stance and would permit exceptions, at least in the sale of obsolete vessels, and if
they served French interests. This French ‘flexibility’ is not surprising, especially in light
of the French Navy’s utter hatred of the Washington accords. They believed the
agreements injured France’s security and kept the French Navy from getting the ships
necessary to fulfill its allotted role in French strategy.42
The Washington Naval Agreements did have their intended effect: they slowed the
growth of naval forces. But the treaties also reduced naval growth in a manner that the
signatories had not foreseen. Not only did the accords prevent the construction of
battleships and other large vessels by major states, therefore halting a race in the
production of capital ships, but they also restricted naval expansion in smaller states.
After the First World War, many of the Great Powers possessed surplus warships that
they could have sold easily to small nations. The Washington agreements interfered with,
or even prevented this, and these unsold vessels more often than not ended up as scrap, or
rusted in lay up, rather than serving in their originally intended roles as active ships of
war. Meanwhile, the major powers rushed to construct new small combatants to replace
aging light ships not covered under the Washington accords.43
The Washington Naval Treaties also produced unforeseen economic benefits for some
of the signatory powers. Since smaller nations could not purchase older naval vessels,
they usually had to conclude contracts with foreign powers for building new ones. More
often than not, in the interwar period these contracts would be made with French and
British firms such as Augustin-Normand and Vickers, though Italian, American, Dutch,
and other national yards built warships for small nations.
Additionally, the necessity of purchasing new vessels helped prepare the ground for
intense economic competition in the Baltic. The 1920s and early 1930s saw Britain and
France expending enormous amounts of effort in the hope of obtaining the contracts for a
small number of warships. These orders would in turn provide jobs for shipyard workers
who, considering the depressed economic conditions in many areas of Britain and France
in the 1920s and 1930s, might otherwise have been idle. After 1922, these jobs would
become increasingly important to the respective Admiralties.44 The competition did
generate lower prices, as it almost always does, but the prices would have been lower still
if the purchasing nations had been allowed to buy older, less modern vessels.
One question that should be raised is this: if the Washington accords had not come
about, would the Germans have found such fertile ground for their clandestine submarine
development in Finland and other small states? If the Finns had been allowed to buy the
British destroyers, and at such bargain prices, would they have elected to purchase
existing submarines from some nation as well? The answer to this is unclear, but when
one considers Finland’s dire financial position, and the difficulties that it experienced
before finally establishing solid funding for a naval program in 1927, this idea is hardly
far-fetched.
In the end, the Washington Naval Treaties forced the small states of the Baltic to
spend larger sums for their naval armaments than would have otherwise been necessary.
This was money that could have been applied to other areas of their developing societies.
Washington also marked the beginning of a policy of limiting, and even reducing naval
armaments by treaty. The Rome Conference would see British efforts to get nations not
included in the Washington agreements to limit their naval strength. The conference
would fail, miserably.45 Eventually, so would the strategy of trying to limit naval
armaments by treaty.
In the end, the Washington accords did produce some economic gains for industrialists
in the signatory states, particularly Britain and France. But these same agreements also
hindered naval development in small nations. Both of these results were unforeseen and
unintended.
NOTES
1. Ernest Andrade, Jr., ‘Great Britain, the Submarine, and Naval Limitations’, in William
R.Roberts and Jack Sweetman (eds), New Interpretations in Naval History: Selected Papers
from the Ninth Naval History Symposium Held at the United States Naval Academy, 18–20
October 1989 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute, 1991), p. 68; Ernest Andrade, Jr, ‘Arms
Limitation Agreements and the Evolution of Weaponry: The Case of the “Treaty Cruiser’”,
in Daniel M. Masterson (ed.), Naval History: The Sixth Symposium of the US Naval
Academy (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1984), p. 179; Andrew Gordon, ‘The
Admiralty and Imperial Overstretch, 1902–1941’, Journal of Strategic Studies 1 (Mar.
1994), 64.
2. Malcolm Smith, ‘Rearmament and Deterrence in Britain in the 1930s’, Journal of Strategic
Studies 3 (Dec. 1978), 320.
3. Peter Jackson, ‘Naval Policy and National Strategy in France, 1933–1937’, Journal of
Strategic Studies 4 (Dec. 2000), 132–5; Towle, ‘British Security’, p. 147.
4. Donner to FO, 8 Nov. 1920, FO 371/5389.
5. Admiralty to FO, 23 Mar. and 8 Aug. 1921, and Ashwood, FO minute, 24 Nov. 1921, FO
371/6766.
6. Admiralty to FO, 19 Dec. 1921, FO 371/6766; Ovey, FO minute, 3 Mar. 1922, FO 371/8097;
Edgar J.Marsh, British Destroyers, 1892–1953 (London: Seeley Service, 1968), p. 133.
7. Admiralty to FO, 19 Dec. 1921, Ovey, FO minute, 22 Dec. 1921, Gregory to Donner, 23 Dec.
1921, and Roberts, FO minute, 21 Dec. 1921, FO 371/6766; Ovey, FO minute, 3 Mar. 1922,
and Donner to Curzon, 18 Jan. 1922, FO 371/8097.
8. Rennie to FO, 23 Jan. 1922, and Ovey for Gregory to Donner, 3 Mar. 1922, FO 371/6766.
9. Von Schoultz to Admiralty, 3 Mar. 1922, Flint to FO, 4 Apr. 1922, Admiralty to FO, 1 Apr.
1922, Shearman, FO minute, Malkin, FO minute, and Ovey to Admiralty, 10 Apr. 1922, FO
371/6766.
10. Rennie to FO, 25 Mar. 1922, and Ovey to Rennie, 30 Mar. 1922, FO 371/6766.
11. Rennie to Ovey, 4 Apr. 1922, FO 371/6766.
12. Ibid.; Rennie to Curzon, 19 Apr. 1922, FO 371/8099.
13. Donner to Curzon, 27 Apr. 1922, and Ovey to Hardinge, Geddes, Graham, and Eliot, 27
Apr. 1922, FO 371/8097.
14. Geddes to FO, 5 May 1922, FO 371/8097.
15. FO comment on policy, s.i. [Apr. 1922?], Rennie to Curzon, 19 May 1922, S?, FO minute, 2
June [1922], and Gregory to Rennie, 10 June 1922, FO 371/8097.
16. Hardinge to FO, 23 May 1922, Graham to Curzon, 13 June 1922, Ovey to Donner, 24 June
1922, Uchida to Eliot, 5 July 1922, Eliot to Balfour, 11 July 1922, and Ovey to Donner, 23
Aug. 1922, FO 371/8097; ‘Visite de M.Harald Hellstrom’, French Charge d’Affaires in
Finland to Peretti de la Roca, 26 Apr. 1922, AMAE, Finlande 10.
17. Vennin, 15 Aug. 1924, SHM, 1BB7129 Lettonie.
18. Wihtol, ‘La pensée navale Finlandaise’, pp. 220–1.
19. Annual report for Finland for 1921, 14 Feb. 1922, FO 371/8100.
20. Meister, ‘Den Lettiska flottan’, p. 299; League of Nations—Official Journal 8 (Nov.-Dec.
1920), 35, 40, 43–4.
21. Young to Secretary of State, 13 Feb. 1922, and Fletcher to Secretary of the Navy, [probably
13 Feb. 1922], file 860p.34/3, IAL, roll 4.
22. Report of Office of the Solicitor, 9 Mar. 1922, Denby to Secretary of State, 4 Mar. 1922,
and Hughes to Denby, 15 Mar. 1922, file 860p.34/3, IAL, roll 4.
23. Denby to Hughes, 28 Mar. 1922, file 860p.34/6, IAL, roll 4.
24. Ibid.; State Department Undersecretary to?, 31 Mar. 1922, file 860p.34/9, IAL, roll 4.
25. Poole to Harrison, 30 Mar. 1922, file 860p.34/9, IAL, roll 4.
26. Poole to Harrison, Mar. 1922, file 860p.34/7, and Poole to Harrison, Mar. 1922, file
860p.34/9, IAL, roll 4.
27. Undersecretary of the Department of State, 31 Mar. 1922, file 860p.34/9, and Hughes to
Denby, 6 Apr. 1922, file 860p.34/6, IAL, roll 4.
28. MM to MAE, 6 Mar. 1922, AMAE Lettonie 22.
29. Ibid.; MAE to de Martel, stamped 18 Mar. 1922, and MAE note, 25 Apr. 1922, AMAE
Lettonie 22.
30. Ogilvie-Forbes to Gregory, 11 Dec. 1924, FO 371/10459.
31. Conseil Supérieur de la Défense Nationale report no. 1264, 6 Jan. 1926, SHM, 1BB8 30.
32. Borel to MAE, 4 June 1925, AMAE, Pologne 42.
33. Ibid.
34. MAE to Bonnet, stamped 20 June 1925, Salaün to MAE, stamped 21 June 1925, Finance
Minister to MAE, stamped 27 June 1925, MAE to MM, stamped 11 Sept. 1925, and s.i.,
Finance Minister to MAE, stamped 9 Jan. 1926, AMAE, Pologne 42.
35. Conseil Supérieur de la Defense Nationale report no. 1264, 6 Jan. 1926, and Cessions de la
Pologne, SHM, 1BB8 30; Fernet to Chef d’EMG, 23 Nov. 1926, SHM, 1BB7 132 Pologne.
36. Leygues to Head of Naval Mission, 26 Mar. 1926, Lyoko-Redziejowski to MM, 12 Apr.
1926, and MAE to Laroche, stamped 26 Aug. 1926, AMAE, Pologne 43.
37. Campbell, FO minute, 28 Oct. 1926, FO 371/11187; Chilton to FO, Aide-Mémoire, 4 Nov.
1926; Department of State Aide-Mémoire, 21 Jan. 1927, FO 371/12038. See also FO
371/11187.
38. Darlan to MAE, 18 Mar. 1927 and French Ambassador Poland to MAE, 7 July 1927,
AMAE, Pologne 43.
39. MAE to de Sartiges, 4 May 1927, and MAE to Fleuriau, 4 May 1927, AMAE, Pologne 43;
French Legation to FO, 23 May 1927, French Ambassador, 23 May 1927, and Vansittart, FO
minute, 31 May [1927], FO 371/11187.
40. Pusta to MAE, 21 Apr. 1923, MAE to MM, undated [1923], and s.i., MM to MAE, 8 May
1923, AMAE, Estonie 17.
41. Walker to FO, 9 Apr. 1926, Estonian Minister to Chamberlain, 23 Feb. 1926, Collier, FO
minute, 4 Mar. [1926], and Campbell, FO minute, 15 Mar. [1926], FO 371/11734.
42. Jackson, ‘Naval Policy’, p. 134.
43. Donald S.Birn, ‘The Washington Naval Conference of 1921–22 in Anglo-French Relations’,
in Masterson (ed.), Naval History, p. 167.
44. Bell, Royal Navy, p. 149.
45. Towle, ‘British Security’, p. 136.
4
Contracts, Competition, and Corruption,
1923–25
By the mid-1920s, the fledgling nations of the eastern Baltic had begun to recover
economically from the Great War. Along with this came not only stability, but also the
development of the private and public institutions necessary for the creation and
maintenance of naval forces. Elements within each of the states lobbied for and against
naval growth and funding debates raged in many of the respective parliaments. The
subsequent quest for suppliers provided fertile ground for often-intense competition. The
governments of Britain and France quickly became involved in the economic struggle,
often on an intimate level, and many foreign businessmen, and sometimes government
officials, proved willing to go to extremes to win the region’s contracts. Salesmen and
officials generally labored under the assumption that an initial success would mean long-
term rewards. They were too optimistic.
After peace came to the Baltic, Britain had trade interests in the region, but maintained
little in the way of strategic commitment. This flew in the face of the thinking of many of
the states of the Baltic littoral. For example, the leaders of Denmark believed that the
British would intervene if war broke out in the Baltic between the Soviet Union and any
League of Nations member state. But Britain believed that it could not afford a foreign
commitment that might embroil it in a struggle with the Soviet Union. Moreover, British
public opinion would never countenance such involvement, and by this point the Foreign
Office had adopted a policy of not advising the successor states, believing that if they did
so, it would result in tying them to Great Britain, something London planned to avoid.
After the Washington Conference, the potential threat from Japan dominated the Royal
Navy’s war planning. Trade became the ‘defining principle in British Baltic policy in the
1920s’.1
Diplomatically, France was more firmly tied to the region by its alliance with Poland,
as well as its economic interests, which soon became paramount. Even before the sailors
and diplomats gathered in Washington to negotiate the naval treaties, Franco-British
rivalry had become the essential factor in the Quai d’Orsay’s Baltic policy, and this
underpinned their political initiatives aimed at developing French economic presence in
the region.2
FINLAND
The Finnish Navy failed in its second attempt to get passage of a naval bill, but before the
program’s demise hopes of its approval brought foreign salesmen intent upon winning a
share of the potential naval contracts. The Finns hoped to keep their costs down by
Contracts, competition, and corruption, 53
having Finnish builders work in conjunction with foreign companies, under government
auspices, to construct most of the vessels in Finnish yards. British and German firms
were viewed as the most likely collaborators. The numbers and types of vessels called for
in the various naval programs differed, but all insisted upon the construction of torpedo
boats, small submarines, and up to four armored coastal defense ships. The second
proposal foresaw a 60-vessel navy totaling 22,924 tons.3
Helsinki’s announcement of its intention to use foreign firms to help in the
construction generated interesting speculation. The statements of one unidentified French
official proved in some ways prophetic. Though he believed that French concerns had a
chance of obtaining at least some of the contracts, he predicted that German companies
would eventually help build Finnish warships. The Frenchman theorized that Finland’s
meager budget would unite with German industrial and governmental desires to
circumvent the Treaty of Versailles. He cited as precedent an incident where German war
material had previously been shipped illegally to Finland, something the Finnish
government had no desire to investigate thoroughly.4
The completion of the envisioned fleet would have made Finland one of the strongest
naval powers in the Baltic. The Russian Navy was in chaos because of the Russian
Revolution and Civil War. Most of the warships of the old Imperial German Navy lay
rusting on the bottom of Scapa Flow, or were in the possession of the victorious Allies.
The only other significant Baltic power, Sweden, possessed a navy, but none of its
vessels was as modern as those the Finns anticipated building. At the time, only Estonia,
which had two Russian Novik-class destroyers, modern ships for the day, possessed any
vessels that compared militarily to those the Finns planned.5
When the bill went before the Eduskunta, the Finnish Parliament, it stirred strong
opposition. French observers attributed part of the initial hostile reaction to the now head
of the General Staff, General Oskar Enckell, who had a reputation for having a
pathological obsession with espionage and secrecy. Because of this the French believed
that Enckell failed to prepare public opinion for the great cost of the program.6
Politically, the presentation of the naval bill had the effect of a ‘stone thrown into a
pond of frogs’. The Socialists derided it. Other parties commented that the expenditure
foreseen greatly surpassed the cost of building a fleet the size of that allowed Finland by
the League of Nations. The government was not particularly pleased with the measure
and supported it ‘rather listlessly’. The British refusal to sell the needed destroyers dealt
the bill its final blow.7
The failure of the budget produced difficulties for the Finnish Navy. The government
slashed the force’s construction funds by one-half, pending the passage of a spending
measure. In 1922, Finland appointed a new committee, also headed by General Enckell.
It soon presented another program that initially called for a fleet of 104 vessels, but was
quickly reduced to 86. The government was still unhappy with the expense and, on 24
May 1923, told Enckell to develop a naval program costing no more than 350,000,000
marks over a seven-year period. Enckell and his committee completed the new plan in
May 1923. The savings came primarily from cutting the number of larger vessels, and
made no difference; the program once again failed to generate enough support to get
through the Parliament.8
The failure of the latest naval bill and the subsequent decision by the Finnish
government to seek the advice of a British military mission before moving any further
along the path of naval development, presented the British with a great opportunity not
only to firmly establish their influence in Finland, but also strengthen Finnish defenses.
Chapter 5 examines this British mission.
While the Eduskunta debated, maneuvering began for the potential Finnish naval
orders. In autumn 1923, Helsinki began taking foreign tenders for the construction of a
fleet based upon a ‘reduced version of the reduced program’. The government gave 20
January 1924 as the deadline for proposals and issued the notice even though no naval
program had yet been voted. With this announcement a French observer noted a growing
Finnish awareness that they lacked the facilities and technological skill to build the
vessels in Finland.9
Numerous foreign companies sought the Finnish orders. French firms such as
Chantiers de la Gironde, Chantiers de la Loire, and Normand du Hâvre, made offers.
British firms, Vickers and Thornycroft, joined the fray, as did US, Swedish, German,
Danish, Italian, Japanese, and Finnish companies. A Swedish builder made an offer on
the largest components of the naval bill, three coast defense ships, and their tender
inspired great interest because of its very modern armament. The Swedish offer to work
with a Finnish builder also proved popular.10
From the beginning, all of the competitors faced an obstacle that most of them had
little hope of overcoming: the overwhelming opinion of the Finnish populace that the
ships should be built in Finland, with Finnish labor. Finnish workers and businessmen
made this abundantly clear after the government awarded the contract for an icebreaker to
a Dutch concern.
The discouraging situation did not dissuade foreign competitors, particularly the
French. French businessmen managed to gain limited official support for some of their
offers. Monsieur de Sairigné, of Chantiers de la Gironde, even concocted a plan for
circumventing the weight of Finnish public opinion. Realizing that the Finns lacked the
technical expertise to construct the larger vessels, de Sairigné believed that Finland
would be willing to accept the plans, direction, and collaboration of a French firm
working under cover of a Finnish company. The work on the vessels would be conducted
outside of Finland, but by Finnish workers.11 At first glance this idea seems unwieldy,
and perhaps even far-fetched. But later events would demonstrate that de Sairigné’s
scheme foreshadowed, in some respects, subsequent Dutch-German-Finnish cooperative
shipbuilding. Whether de Sairigné ever put his idea to the Finns is unclear.
The orders for the vessels were a long time coming. The navy could not buy the ships
until the Eduskunta voted the funds, and it refused to act until it received the
recommendations of a British military mission led by General Sir Walter M.St G.Kirke.
The presence of Kirke and his advisors greatly concerned the French, who feared the
‘inconvenience’ that it would create for French industry in Finland.12
For the most part, France viewed Great Britain as its primary rival for the Finnish
contracts, and with the presence of a British military mission this seemed a very sensible
assessment. The French admitted early that they had no chance to receive the contracts
for the many torpedo boats in the naval program, believing that these ‘were surely
reserved for English firms’, especially Thornycroft. The French based their view on two
factors. First was the success of the British raid on Kronstadt in 1919, a raid conducted
from a Finnish anchorage with Thornycroft boats, and the great impression this made on
Helsinki. The second reason was that at the time no French firm could offer one, a
surprising situation in the birthplace of the Jeune Ecole. The Italians also vied for the
order. These efforts were wasted. When the order eventually came—four years later and
for only two boats—it went, as the French had anticipated, to Thornycroft. Capitaine de
frégate Vennin, the French naval attaché to Finland and the Baltic States, a driving force
behind French naval arms sales in the region in the early 1920s, and sometimes bitter
critic of the inefficiency of French salesmen, reminded his superiors that the French
businessmen should remember the old proverb: ‘Aide-toi le ciel t’aidera!’13
The French also feared that because of Kirke’s mission the British would be able to
obtain copies of submarine plans submitted by French firms. Hjalmar J.Procopé, the
Finnish Minister for Foreign Affairs, assured the French that this would not happen.
Vennin took up this concern with Commodore von Schoultz, the head of the Finnish
Navy. The Commodore attempted to assuage Vennin’s fears, informing him that the
British mission would only be responsible for determining Finland’s defense needs and
would not discuss the various arms proposals forwarded to the Finnish government.
Moreover, von Schoultz gave a specific promise not to reveal the French plans. Vennin
replied that in this matter the Commodore was responsible for the honor of the Finnish
Navy.14
Vennin had good reason to fear that the British might obtain French submarine plans.
In Latvia, Vennin had acquired copies of British submarine designs submitted in the
competition for the Latvian naval contracts. The drawings came from the head of the
Latvian Navy, Captain (later Admiral) Count Archibald von Keyserling, who always
went out of his way to assist the French.15 One wonders whose honor was at stake in this
matter.
Vennin’s fear that the British might receive copies of French submarine designs could
also have been rooted in his awareness of the deficiencies of the French craft, particularly
those manufactured by Chantiers de la Loire. These vessels worked perfectly in areas
where the French Navy generally operated, but in the Baltic Sea, and especially the Gulf
of Finland, the waters are much colder than those usually frequented by French
submarines. The thin steel of the hull and the arrangement of the ballast tanks were very
susceptible to the extreme cold of the Baltic and could be damaged easily by ice. Certain
equipment on the bridge was also too delicate for the harsh Finnish winter. Commodore
von Schoultz was well aware of these defects.16
Swedish and German competitors caused Vennin some concern, and no doubt the
British as well. The Swedes made a strong bid for the orders and attempted to impress
Finland with the quality of Swedish construction through a visit of their fleet to Helsinki.
The French considered them a strong threat, not an unfounded fear considering the
historical and cultural ties between the two states. Vennin did not believe that Finland
‘for political reasons’, a point on which he did not elaborate, would make a deal with
Germany for the contracts. But did offer his suspicions that the Dutch firm, Smits of
Rotterdam, from which the Finns had ordered an icebreaker, was a dummy corporation of
the German firm Germania Werft.17 In light of later events examined in successive
chapters, his observations are particularly interesting.
LATVIA
In 1921, the Latvian Navy acquired Virsaitis, its first significant warship. Virsaitis, the
former German minesweeper M.68, sank off the mouth of the Dvina River on 29 October
1917, after striking a mine. The sinking did not damage the ship’s most important
components and Latvian yards raised and repaired the vessel. It joined some armed
tugboats serving as auxiliaries and two icebreakers that had been incorporated into the
Latvian Navy in 1919. Both were ex-Russian vessels and renamed Varonis and Lacplesis,
respectively.18
This same year, Latvia’s Parliament began examining the nation’s naval defense
needs. Captain Archibald von Keyserling, the head of the Latvian Navy, presented a
variety of naval construction programs that culminated in a September 1922 proposal
that, for want of a better term, we will refer to as the ‘large program’. It consisted of four
small destroyers, four submarines, two minesweepers, 1,500 mines, and nine seaplanes to
supplement the three the Latvians already possessed. The French eagerly watched the
process, believing that winning the orders would ensure that they could place a naval
advisor in Latvia and strengthen French influence in the emerging state. Paris had sound
reason to hope for a naval mission. A French military mission under Lieutenant-Colonel
Emmanuel du Parquet had worked in Latvia from May 1919 to July 1920.19
As Keyserling drew up his plan, the naval building effort caused controversy. The
opposition argued that Latvia did not need a navy, was too poor to build and maintain
warships, and that the money would be better spent elsewhere. Others insisted that Latvia
needed a powerful fleet. In a March 1922 speech, Latvian President Janis Cakste
described both of these viewpoints as ‘erroneous’ and called for Latvia to find a middle
path. Cakste wanted a small, well-equipped fleet that possessed a few medium-sized
ships and some submarines. He called for a naval force designed to prevent ‘eventual
hostile descents’, hostile obviously meaning Soviet, and protect Latvian neutrality in the
event of war in the region.20
Cakste delivered this speech to support the government’s naval program. Some
observers believed that the President seized every opportunity to mention naval defense.
The two naval building plans, the smaller and the larger, were then under discussion. The
government backed the first, the Latvian General Staff the second. The government’s
program proposed the expenditure over a four-year period of 9,989,200 lats for the
purchase of two submarines of about 400 tons, two minesweepers that could also serve as
minelayers, six seaplanes, and 500 mines. The primary role of the ships would be the
defense of Riga.21
The government endorsed the smaller program, but it also expressed sympathy for the
General Staff proposal. Proponents of the larger program considered this an addition to
the smaller. It anticipated the purchase of four 1,000 ton destroyers, two additional
submarines, 18 seaplanes, and 1,500 mines. The General Staff planned to defend the
coast from the Straits of Irben to Liepāja (Libau) against Soviet attack, and wanted the
larger program to run concurrently with the smaller over a seven-year period. Central to
the naval defense policies of the three Baltic States was the belief that their mission
should be to hamper the movement of the Soviet Navy for the first two weeks of a war.
By the end of this period they expected the intervention of a powerful, friendly fleet.
Keyserling believed that this power would be France, and he was not the only prominent
official to hold such an opinion. Prime Minister Zigfrids Anna Meierovics thought, at
least to a limited extent, that if the Soviet Union attacked Latvia, France would supply the
Latvians with war material.22
On 7 December 1923 the naval bill came before the Saeima, the Latvian Parliament,
for its first vote. Duhzen, the Minister of Defense, wanted a small naval force augmented
by coastal artillery batteries, and insisted upon a closed-door session to debate the matter.
The Social Democrats led a coalition of opposition parties that insisted on a session open
to the public. Their effort was rejected by a vote of 61 to 28.23
Discussion commenced immediately, but the Social Democrats refused to accept
defeat. As the Socialist speaker presented their party’s objections, the head of the Latvian
Communist Party worked the room to convince his colleagues to demand that voting on
the bill take place by secret ballot. As soon as he had collected the 35 necessary
adherents, the Socialist spokesman quit the rostrum. To the great surprise of the
government and the majority of the members of the Parliament, the Saeima adopted the
measure for a secret ballot. Local reports insisted that by ensuring secret balloting the
Socialists garnered the support of a large number of the Russian and Jewish deputies,
who would not have voted against the measure if the ballot had been an open one. The
naval program passed by a slim margin: 45 to 36.24
The government’s victory in December did not ensure that the bill would become law.
It came before the Saeima again on 19 February, only to be struck from the points being
discussed. It reappeared on 11 March 1924, in the face of continued Socialist opposition.
Their protests proved futile. The bill passed on its second reading and its third reading
was scheduled for 1 April. When it passed, a British representative in Riga commented
that the French were already working hard to get the contracts.25
The Minister of War was eager to bring the naval program back before the Parliament
and threatened to resign unless his demand was met. He obtained an early date for the
bill’s discussion, arguing that retarding the project created difficulties in Latvia’s
negotiations with Estonia on the establishment of a common defense plan. On 10 April
1924 the Saeima finally passed the Latvian Naval Defense Law. It provided for the
expenditure over a four-year period of 9,989,200 lats, or about £440,000, and approved
the purchase of two submarines, two minesweepers, 500 mines, and six seaplanes.
Additionally, Colonel Francis Birkstein, the new Minister of Defense, pushed through a
bill doubling the number of aircraft. The Latvians did not issue a public call for bids, but
solicited prices from three British and one French firm. A year before Parliament voted
the money, Paris felt well placed to win the orders and saw British firms as the primary
challengers.26
During the naval program debates, the Latvians expanded their maritime forces in
another manner. To supplement their two ice-breakers, Varonis and Lacplesis, on 20
April 1923 the Latvian Marine Department published the specifications for a new
icebreaker for the port of Riga, and asked the leading foreign shipbuilders for bids. They
received 24 replies from seven nations, including Britain and France.27
The French brought strong diplomatic pressure to bear upon the Latvians for the order
to go to a French firm. Despite this, a British builder, Beardmore & Co, received the
contract, even after submitting a higher price than the French and Dutch competitors. The
French company, Wurms, complained, and the French began pushing the Latvians to
change the decision, even warning that if the French press got wind of the matter it would
injure Latvian interests. The French smelled bribery, and the French representative, de
Martel, commented that France’s businessmen were not doing enough to win over
Latvian officials. When questioned about the deal Meierovics insisted that Beardmore’s
ability to meet the October 1924 deadline for delivery decided the matter, not price, and
insisted that the French would receive compensation in the form of the contracts for the
naval program. Dissatisfied, but realizing they were beaten, the French dropped the
matter. To counter French pressure, the Foreign Office suggested a visit by a light cruiser
squadron and asked the Admiralty to consider one in the next few months.28 One wonders
if they realized the potential problems related to making such a request in mid-December.
The new icebreaker, Krisjanis Valdemārs, was launched on 9 June 1925, quite a bit
later than the promised date, and arrived in Riga on 22 October 1925 after a stormy
passage. Its acquisition generated dissatisfaction in segments of the polity. Criticism of
the government appeared in the Latvian press, most of it based upon false assumptions
and incorrect information. The government successfully defended itself against its
detractors and objections evaporated immediately.29
To ensure their capture of orders for the naval program, the French began
maneuvering for position as early as July 1923. Capitaine de frégate Vennin, the French
naval attaché, was the key French figure in the battle. A primary part of his work in
Latvia was winning the naval program orders for France. Vennin, and many of the others
involved in the deals, both British and French, used various and often questionable
measures in their attempts to sway the Latvians, a point subsequently addressed in more
detail. Propaganda was one of the more straight-forward tools and a minor example was
Vennin’s furnishing Latvian theaters, free of charge, with films the French Navy used to
recruit sailors.30 Vennin hoped such efforts would provide him with an advantage over
his competitors by influencing public opinion.
The new naval program called for the expansion of the naval air arm, which in early
1923 consisted of only three small Savoia seaplanes purchased from Italy. Captain
Keyserling, the Commander of the Latvian Navy, was unhappy with these planes, which
was understandable because one of them suffered a mechanical failure while over the
Baltic—when the Captain was a passenger. The Swedes proved kind enough to rescue
Keyserling and the pilot, and Virsaitis later did the same for the stricken aircraft. The
commander-in-chief of one navy being rescued by the vessels of another could only have
produced consternation and embarrassment for Keyserling. Vennin saw the incident as an
excellent opportunity to interest the Latvian commander in French aircraft and met with
Keyserling before the latter left for an air show in Sweden. Vennin learned that the Italian
machines had been acquired solely because they were the least expensive. French firms
had demanded five times as much.31
This was typical of how French armament companies tried to do business in the Baltic,
and soon a pattern of behavior emerged that made Vennin’s job more difficult. First, the
firms pleaded furiously for the intervention of French officials. Then, they proposed
prices that were generally far in excess of their competitors. And third, if they lost the
sale, they whined incessantly.
The behavior of French companies occasionally produced vitriolic critiques from
government officials. After Bellanger de Neuilly sur Seine presented a single unit price
for a seaplane of 325,000 francs, one official remarked that he could not counter regional
prejudice against French industry and its practices if ‘its fanciful people defy reason’.
This same official went on to say that if French businessmen wanted to get into the
market in new states they would have to stop treating them as though they were African
colonies. He eventually concluded that it would be better for the French firms to abstain
than to charge prices so dramatically out of step with other foreign competitors.32
Obviously, the French merchants often displayed as much arrogance toward the region’s
small states as the policymakers.
The incompetence of French businessmen never swayed Vennin from his task, and he
used the previously mentioned conversation with Keyserling to interest the captain in
French aircraft. He gave Keyserling the performance characteristics of some French
planes and intimated to his superiors that Keyserling was very interested in the machines,
particularly those manufactured by Bregeut. Vennin also commented that if the planes
proved satisfactory the remainder of the order for the aircraft of the naval program would
follow.33
Vennin asked the French representative in Göteborg to not only ensure that Keyserling
had access to the aircraft he wanted to see during his visit, but also to make sure that the
French manufacturers gave the Latvians good terms for any possible sale. Vennin
believed the French firms stood an excellent chance of receiving the contract—if they
asked reasonable prices—and felt that the poor performance of the Savoias did not
preclude that company from being the benefactor of additional Latvian orders. He saw a
deal on the sea-planes as a step toward snaring the rest of the naval program for France.34
Vennin’s efforts were for naught. Keyserling struck a deal with the Swedes. This must
have surprised the French officer. Vennin believed that Keyserling had ‘sentiments très
francophiles’ and always found him ‘nettement francophile’, feelings that Vennin felt
would sway Keyserling toward France. Other French officials in Latvia expressed similar
opinions about Keyserling. Vennin had also written that Keyserling was at that time
working hard to win the vessels of the naval program for France.35
Vennin attributed the loss of the contract to the incompetence of the French aircraft
manufacturers, particularly Caudron (though he did not indicate why Caudron bore the
brunt of his disgust), as well as the efficiency of their Swedish competitors. In Göteborg,
Keyserling and the other Latvian officers received enormous catalogs from various firms
detailing the advantages of the aircraft on display. The French, even after Keyserling told
them of his interest in the Bregeut machines, never furnished the Captain with any
information. Vennin reacted bitterly to the lack of action on the part of French industry at
a time when France’s postwar economy faced the twin specters of inflation and rapid
devaluation of the franc.36
Vennin brushed off this rebuff and searched for other ways of winning the seaplane
order for France. With the help of the French Minister of Defense and France’s Naval
Minister, Vennin encouraged the French government to approach Bregeut and ask them
to sell a plane to the government at a reduced price, so it could then be sent to Latvia.
Vennin believed that once the Latvians saw the quality of the French machines the order
would surely go to France. The French Defense Ministry bought a Hanriot seaplane
trainer with funds that had been collected to purchase such an aircraft for the French
Navy. The money was not quite sufficient to cover the cost of the machine, but the
government convinced Hanriot to reduce the price from 59,000 to 40,000 francs and
forgo any commission. France then presented the plane to the Latvians as a gift. To
Vennin, there was no better advertisement for French products, and he felt that this would
surely increase French influence in Latvia. In May 1924, the aircraft arrived in Libau on
board Virsaitis.37
The seaplane had only part of the effect Vennin desired. The Latvians did purchase
two aircraft from France in 1925, one from Hanriot and another from Caudron, but the
hoped-for large number of follow-on orders did not occur and the Latvians eventually
bought six planes from the Swedish firm Svenska Aero Aktisbolaget of Skärsätra. They
also purchased a British Beardmore, with which they were extremely dissatisfied, and
during the years after the passage of the Naval Law and the supplement, the Latvians
bought six fighters for the navy from the Italian firm Fiat.38
The Latvians were not satisfied with the quality of the Italian aircraft, nor did they like
the Czech Smolik models purchased for other branches of the military. Members of
Parliament even threatened to investigate the matter. A deal with Bristol also brought
condemnation from the Latvian government and an eventual change in Latvia’s
purchasing policies, as well as an example of institutional anti-Semitism. The Ministry of
Defense claimed that Bristol’s ‘Jewish’ agent in the Soviet Union had revealed the details
of the contract. As a result, the Latvians refused to entertain any proposals from firms
having Jewish ‘affiliations’.39
In late 1924, the British scored a success in the battle for contracts when the Latvians
ordered some of the mines designated in the Naval Program from the British firm
Vickers. The Latvians had examined mines proposed by the French firm Sautter-Harlé,
but the equipment failed to measure up to the requirements of the Latvian General Staff,
who wanted an electrically fired device, not a mechanical one. Even after the placing of
the order Vennin proved his eternal optimism by writing that ‘perhaps this decision
would be susceptible to revision’. It was not. The Latvians also built 500 mines at the
Tosamare-Werk in Liepāja, as well as depth charges.40
Despite the often strenuous efforts of Vennin, de Martel, and others, the French were
thwarted in their efforts to obtain the initial contracts for the seaplanes and mines, the
latter of which went to the British firm Vickers. But they proved successful in the battle
for the more substantial portions of the Latvian naval program. The official Latvian
decision on the contracts eventually came to rest on one point more than any other:
training. But other, less publicly discussed elements also played a part.
The Latvian government asked both the British and the French about sending officers
and men to their respective naval training schools. They approached the British in April
1924 about sending officers to the Royal Navy’s submarine and torpedo schools. The
British naval attaché, as well as other British representatives in the region, warned that if
the Admiralty did not agree to the request the contract would go to the French because
Paris was willing to accede to Latvia’s wishes. The Admiralty agreed to consider any
application for the torpedo school, but replied that it was against Admiralty policy to train
foreign officers on British submarines. The Admiralty did agree to give the Latvians
instruction on their own boats—if they purchased the vessels in Great Britain.41
Vennin also encouraged his superiors to take positive action on the issue of training.
He was certain that it would aid French ‘political and moral’ influence in Latvia.
Moreover, he insisted that France had arrived at ‘an important point in the struggle
against English influence in Latvia. Hopefully it will end to our advantage.’ The French
agreed to open all of their naval schools to Latvian officers and also consented to their
completing their training with duty on French warships. The French did not make the
offer without attaching a big string: the orders for the naval program had to go to French
firms. The instructions for this came from Contre-Amiral Brisson, now undersecretary of
the French Admiralty Staff. Ironically, to the Latvians Brisson was a hero, having
commanded the intervening French naval squadron at the battle for Riga during Latvia’s
war for independence.42
The primary British competitor for the warships was Vickers. Another was
Beardmore, which had recently won the Latvian contract for the pair of icebreakers. De
Martel, the French ambassador to Riga, postulated bribery as the reason for British
success, but could prove nothing. The strong interest of Vickers in the Latvian deal
prompted de Martel to ask the French Foreign Ministry to put pressure on the Latvian
Minister to Paris. He considered it necessary to use any influence he possessed to bring
the contracts to France, and urged French intervention on behalf of Augustin-Normand,
Chantiers de la Loire, and Sautter-Harlé.43
The Latvians, though, had their own ideas for taking advantage of the intense French
and British interest in the orders. In December 1923, while the Latvian Parliament still
debated the naval bill, Prime Minister Meierovics launched an ambitious attempt to use
awarding of the contracts to win a security guarantee for Latvia. On 10 December 1923,
Meierovics told Sir Tudor Vaughan, the British representative in Riga, that political
considerations had a strong bearing on Latvia’s decision on a builder, and then discussed
a French promise to send warships to Latvia if the nation came under attack—if France
got the contracts. Meierovics confessed that he did not put much faith in this, but
Vaughan feared that any remarks along this line might be enough to sway Latvia into the
French industrial camp. Foreign Office officials inquired if the statement made by the
French had included the term ‘weather permitting’ and advised Vaughan to ask the
Latvians to make a comparison between French and British naval presence in the Baltic
and insisted that ‘French men-of-war depend more on “weather” (political and
meteorological) than British’. Another Foreign Office official smirked that ‘French naval
support is a very flimsy safeguard beyond perhaps the mouth of the Seine’.44
But this was only phase one of Meierovics’s gambit. He told de Martel, the French
consul, in ‘strictest confidence’, that Vaughan, the British representative, had said that in
the event of a conflict there was no doubt that a British fleet would come to the Baltic and
that Britain would intervene with Moscow on Latvia’s behalf.45
Meierovics obviously hoped to extract some type of promise of support, even if only a
weak one, in the event of a Soviet attack, and seized upon an opportunity at hand.
Meierovics had powerful bait, and at least in regard to getting local French officials to
fall into his trap, he had some success. De Martel urged his superiors to allow him to give
the Latvians some type of imprecise declaration of French support on a par with the
‘rather vague assurances’ de Martel believed Britain had offered. Moreover, he believed
that the position of France vis-à-vis the awarding of the contracts was a very weak one
because France had not yet signed a commercial accord with Latvia. To help the French
position, he urged the visit of a large, French naval force.46
Meierovics also snared at least one of the French industrial representatives, Capitaine
de corvette René Jouen, a former French naval officer, and the representative of Ateliers
et Chantiers de la Loire. Jouen met with Meierovics, and the Latvian Prime Minister
insisted that the contracts would be awarded based upon three considerations: financial,
technical, and political. Meierovics said that, financially, the French and British were in
line with one another, and that technically the French vessels were seen as superior. But
in the political battle France stood on less solid ground because of the supposed British
promise of support against the Soviets—an assurance not matched by the French
government. Commandant Jouen thought that Meierovics wanted to give France the
contracts, and would do so if Paris granted the same or similar ‘assurances’ as the British.
Marcel Haas, Jouen’s superior at Chantiers de la Loire, pushed to have de Martel
instructed to give just such ‘assurances’ in order to help Chantiers de la Loire get the
orders.47
Haas also believed that a second naval program would follow and that the Latvians, in
order to preserve the homogeneity of their forces, would certainly pass the second round
of orders on to the firm that filled the first. Moreover, he insisted that the Latvian-
Estonian military alliance opened up the possibility of contracts with the Estonians, if the
French could emerge victorious in Latvia.48
Some in the French Navy also hoped that the vessels of the Latvian Navy would be
built in French yards. Having under construction in France warships of a French type for
a foreign power would, in the event of mobilization, provide a ready reserve of
compatible material that the navy could requisition. In the eyes of the French admirals
this new construction provided potentially important additions. Above everything, Haas
insisted that the decision on who got the contracts hinged above all on the ‘benevolent
support’ of the head of the French Foreign Ministry, and the efforts of French diplomats
to put French political influence in Latvia on the same par as that of Great Britain.49
The French Foreign Ministry proved not quite as eager to take the bait as the
salesmen. The French made inquiries in London and found that the British had made no
such declarations of the ‘tenor’ that French reports from Latvia had intimated. The British
committed to following the provisions of the League of Nations (which also bound
France) regarding the defense of a state under attack, but certainly had no intention of
unilaterally intervening with a naval force on Latvia’s behalf. The French found it
‘particularly unbecoming’ to link any eventual French political and military intervention
to the granting of an order to private industry. De Martel was authorized to tell the
Latvians that possible French assistance would have a more ‘concrete character’ if
Meierovics extended the Latvian-Estonian alliance to Poland.50
As the political maneuvering continued, the Latvians considered the plans and bids
submitted by the various British and French firms such as Vickers, Hawthorne Leslie &
Co, Chantiers de la Loire, and Augustin-Normand. Keyserling proved his devotion to the
French cause by delivering to Vennin the plans for submarines submitted by the British
firms. Vennin criticized the British designs and doubted the stated speed and battery
capacity. He called the plans a ‘bluff’, the submarines impossible to produce, and
contended that the British had simply found a way ‘to beat’ the Latvians. He insisted that
the British plans applied only to a vessel designed for export and thought it would be
interesting to compare the designs submitted to the Latvians with those for a submarine
constructed for the Royal Navy.51
His charges were mere suspicions, and perhaps an example of the rabid Anglophobia
affecting the officer corps of the French Navy. The Royal Navy commonly supported its
shipbuilders by allowing them to sell vessels based upon Admiralty designs. This kept
British yards busy and reduced the cost of the Royal Navy’s own vessels.52
The British did not remain inactive and Vaughan believed that he could influence the
Latvian decision if a British squadron, which included a submarine flotilla, visited Latvia.
Such visits are not uncommon and not a few of the government and military officials
involved in the competition, Vennin for example, believed that navies served a valuable
role as tools of foreign policy. Vaughan also suggested that if the contract went to the
French the visit could be canceled as a protest, advice with which the Foreign Office did
not agree. One official insisted that it ‘savours too much of French methods’.53
Eventually, the order for the Latvian submarines went to the French firm Chantiers de
la Loire, while Augustin-Normand of Hâvre received the contract for the two
minesweepers. But this did not occur until 4 July 1924, after the resolution of a Latvian
ministerial crisis and much pleading for intervention on their behalf by the French
industrial concerns. The French probably won the contracts because the British Admiralty
would only provide theoretical instruction to Latvian officers, while the French promised
theoretical training combined with shipboard service. Price apparently played less of a
role than in the purchase of the Savoias. The French submitted a bid of 6,432,800 lats for
the submarines, and 1,556,900 lats for the minesweepers. The French offered the lowest
price for the latter vessels, the bid being 58 percent less than that offered by the
association of Vickers and Hawthorne Leslie & Company. J.Samuel White, another
British firm, submitted a lower bid for the submarines, 6,356,116 lats, but did not receive
the order. A British diplomat in Riga commented that the ‘French appear to have held out
many other inducements which we were precluded from doing’.54
Corruption played a critical role. Major H.W.C.Lloyd, the British military attaché for
the Baltic States and Finland, observed that in Latvia and the other Baltic States the
‘Russian’ tradition of bribery still existed in government circles. American officials noted
that Latvians involved in the arrangement of government contracts expected ‘an indirect
compensation usually in the neighborhood of 10% of the transaction’. The Latvians made
an attempt to correct this by establishing a State Control Commission. Minor officials sat
on the Commission and had the power to examine all questions of government
expenditure. Therefore, when the Ministry of Defense compiled their military estimates,
these figures passed through the State Control Commission. Purchases of foreign war
materials went through a similar procedure. This system failed to deal with the corruption
issue because those who wished to ensure that a proposal survived the Commission
merely bribed its members.55
Both the French and the British made use of Latvia’s tradition of corruption. In 1928,
after the delivery of the submarines purchased in France, General Janis Baladois, the
Latvian Minister for Foreign Affairs, expressed to Joseph Addison, the British
representative in Riga, his regrets that the order had not gone to a British firm. Baladois
commented that the British failed to receive the contract because they would not provide
training. Addison insisted that Baladois
Naturally did not supplement this simple explanation by stating the other,
and more cogent reason for our failure to secure this contract, namely that
the Latvian Admiral [Keyserling] had become convinced of the
superiority of the French submarines only after he had received the
Legion of Honour, as well as the certainty of a reward of a more

substantial nature.56
Addison believed that as long as Keyserling remained head of the ‘Latvian “Navy’” the
scales would remain ‘heavily weighted in the favour of France’ and because of this, any
British bids would have little chance of succeeding. He revealed other reports of
collusion between Keyserling and the French:
Acting on the French proverb that ‘les petits cadeaux entretiennent

l’amitié’ Count Keyserling continues to enjoy little favours destined to
keep alive his sentiments of gratitude. I have it for instance, on the best of
authorities, that he is able periodically to renew his cellar from the French
Legation on most-favoured-nation terms, instead of having to pay the
blackmailing charges of one of the local bootleggers. In the words of
Figaro ‘qui diable y resisterait’?57
It is hardly surprising that Keyserling proved much more pliable in the hands of the
French representatives, for despite the protestations of the inhabitants of Kent, it would
be quite difficult to bribe a gentleman with English wine.
Addison was not the only British official to report irregularities. Sir Tudor Vaughan
also mentioned the offers of ‘high French decorations’ to Latvian officials if the orders
for the naval program went to France. But these accusations could be, at least in some
respects, a case of ‘sour grapes’. Count Keyserling received his Legion of Honor on 19
November 1924, and the French recommended that a number of other officials also
receive decorations, six in all. These six were not nominated for their awards until 1926,
more than two years after the signing of the contracts. Those recommended were in some
way connected to the launch of the Latvian submarine Spidola. The French Foreign
Ministry wanted to use the decorations to demonstrate the importance they placed upon
the event. The recipients included the commanders of the two submarines and General
Radzin, the Commander-in-Chief of the Latvian military. The French government refused
the urging of Monsieur Augustin Normand to decorate Feldmans, the Latvian charge
d’affaires in Paris, and one of the nominated half-dozen, who Normand insisted had been
‘actively’ involved in the submarine sale. The Foreign Ministry followed its protocol,
which did not allow the presentation of such awards to diplomats, unless they were
leaving France, and had served there for at least two years.58
Addison also contended that the loss of the contract resulted partially from the actions
of Vickers’ special agent in Latvia, ‘an idiot of the name of Savitsky’. This is a marked
contrast with French views regarding their personnel involved in winning these particular
orders. One French official applauded de Martel’s role and considered the ‘patient
intelligence’ of Chantiers de la Loire’s representative Commandant Jouen instrumental to
French success.59
Addison was also critical of another Vickers’ agent, Sakovsky, and remarked that the
Latvians refused to deal with either of them. He gathered that the Latvians disliked
Sakovsky because he ‘chatters too much and does not keep such promises as he may have
made to distribute certain sums of money to the persons interested’. Addison also wrote
that
Sakovsky is such an ass in his own business that he actually went to

somebody I know here and asked him whether he could introduce him to
Admiral Keyserling and fix up the proper bribe. Anything more idioted
[sic] I cannot imagine.60
Addison recommended that Vickers send a special agent ‘who should be an intelligent
person and not, as usual, a silly ass’. Moreover, he noted that Vickers should not have
expected to obtain the submarine contracts unless they expected to ‘pay a certain sum for
services rendered’, an obvious allusion to the necessity of bribing the proper people.61
It is likely that much of official Latvian hostility towards Sakovsky arose because he
was Russian. The intensely nationalistic Latvians disliked doing business with Russians,
and British firms that employed them as their local representatives in Latvia, as well as
Estonia, often did great damage to their business chances. Latvian governmental and
business personnel treated Jewish representatives in the same manner.62
ESTONIA
Vennin also fought British influence in Estonia. Here, he seized upon the issue of training
for naval officers in an attempt to weaken Britain’s grip on Tallinn. The French believed
that Britain’s political and economic hold over Estonia was virtually impenetrable and
considered Ants Piip, as well as other prominent Estonian officials, firmly British in their
sympathies. Vennin referred to Estonia as ‘un “fief” anglais, le Portugal de la Baltique’.
He contributed this, correctly, to British naval assistance in Estonia’s war for
independence. Vennin lamented the December 1922 dissolution of the French Baltic
Naval Division, adding that this gave fuel to France’s enemies (without mentioning their
identity), and that it drove the Estonians into the arms of Great Britain.63
Despite the assistance given by the British to the Estonian cause, Admiral Juhan
Pitka’s successor, Captain (later Admiral) Herman Salza, expressed dissatisfaction with
the British Navy. Several Estonian naval officers went to Great Britain for training and
Salza believed that the British had only partially opened the door to the Estonians, and as
a result, the cadets had not learned the basics. Vennin, on Salza’s initiative, capitalized on
the Captain’s displeasure and some Estonian naval officers went to train in France,
something the Estonian Army had already done. Vennin hoped that this would provide
the French with a ‘means of action’ in Estonia.64
The issue of training continued to be a sticky one. Salza wanted eventually to order
two submarines to bring Estonia’s Navy into line with Latvia and Finland but, as usual,
Estonia’s poverty interfered. Tallinn wanted the order to go to Britain, but the
Admiralty’s reluctance to allow foreign officers to train on British submarines cast doubt
upon the chances of a British firm winning any bid. The French proved more cooperative
on this matter, though at the time no Estonian naval officers had yet gone to train in
France. The intransigence of the Admiralty seemed to provide the French with an
excellent chance of gaining ground in the battle for influence, though at various points in
the 1920s Estonian naval officers journeyed to Great Britain for training.65
Estonia’s desire to buy a pair of submarines brought immediate interest from
Augustin-Normand, which appealed for support from the French Foreign Ministry. It
quickly received an endorsement because of ‘the economic and national defense interests
that guaranteeing the order to your firm represents’.66
Estonia’s perpetually wretched finances prevented a submarine deal, but did not
preclude their purchase of aircraft. Here, the French smelled an opportunity. The
Estonian military purchased a number of Gordou-Leseur aircraft, probably because the
French agreed to train two Estonian pilots in France. This success led a French official to
comment that in aviation Estonia’s orientation had become ‘nicely French, despite the
influence of an English instructor’. Coupled with this was what proved a forlorn hope for
a ‘quasi-monopoly’ over such sales in Estonia.67
Negotiations between Estonia and Britain in 1924 and again in 1925 regarding a
British military mission yielded nothing. The British were willing to send a mission to
Estonia, despite some opinions that it seemed more likely to antagonize the Soviet Union
and was therefore a more serious matter diplomatically than Kirke’s mission to Finland.68
LITHUANIA
On 14 July 1923, the Lithuanian government founded a Coast Watch and placed it under
the control of the Interior Ministry. With the acquisition of Klaipeda came two German
motorboats, Savanoris and Lietuvaité, which became the nucleus of a tiny Lithuanian
naval force. Lithuania added another small boat in 1924, and two others in 1932. Later,
they constructed a sixth, the Partizanas, domestically.69
The Lithuanians drew up a plan, probably early in 1927, to build a small navy.
Presumably, Colonel Theodore Dauktas, the Defense Minister, and also a former Tsarist
naval officer, authored the scheme. The Lithuanians wanted to buy up to six submarines,
as well as torpedo boats, minelayers, and coastal batteries. Kovno planned to have the
ships built in Italy, the nation with which Lithuania had developed its most significant
naval ties. They sent officers to train in Italy and France, but the Lithuanians desperately
needed equipment and often lacked even elementary items. They had no mines before
1940, and even more serious, no naval aircraft. Additionally, Klaipeda possessed weak
fortifications as the Germans had removed its guns.70
Lithuania’s plans for increasing its maritime strength produced little. A lack of money,
the continuously precarious situation of Klaipeda, and the nation’s chaotic politics,
undermined Lithuania’s naval hopes. In 1926, Antanas Smetona and his supporters
overthrew the democratic government and established a dictatorship. From 1927 to 1940
there were 13 unsuccessful revolts against the Smetona regime by various factions within
the army officer corps.71
There were groups in Lithuania, such as the Sailors Association (Jurininku Sajunga),
which worked to further Lithuania’s naval development. Brigadier General Vladas
Nagius-Nagevicius, the director of the War Museum, and the head of the army medical
service, founded the new association in 1923 and was its first president. A former Tsarist
naval officer who had served in the Baltic and Black Sea Fleets, Nagius-Nagevicius and
his organization helped create a training school for sailors and raised funds for
scholarships to train Lithuanian sailors abroad.72
In 1927, General Nagius-Nagevicius encouraged Celina Mosinskis, the wife of a
prominent Lithuanian politician, to establish the Lithuanian Women’s National Naval
Assistance Society (Lietuvos Moteru Tautiniam). Its purpose was to develop interest in
and awareness of sea power among Lithuanians, as well as to help firmly establish a
navy. Later, this organization helped create the Navy Fund (Karo Laivyno).73
POLAND
In January 1922, a year after the departure of the British naval mission, the Poles asked
the French for an officer to help organize their navy. By July, this request had blossomed
into Vice-Admiral Porębski requesting a naval mission. Porębski seems to have been
looking for ways to bind the French to Poland, not an unwise decision, and held out naval
cooperation as the bait. Initially, the French saw few strategic possibilities for the weak
Polish Navy, even though they believed that Porębski’s primary concern was ‘the
strategic cooperation of the French Navy in operations in Poland’.74
Soon though, the French Navy became just as eager for cooperation as their Polish
counterparts. Poland’s geographic position, as well as its desire to build a small fleet,
fitted perfectly into French naval strategy. In its war planning in the early 1920s, the
French Navy envisioned fighting Germany and Italy—without British support. The
existence of a Polish fleet provided an additional threat against the Germans. Also,
because one of the tasks of the French Navy was to guard the sea lines of communication
to France’s empire, and because of the Washington treaties, the French Navy
concentrated on the construction of cruisers and destroyers. But Washington also had
tonnage limits. In Poland, more specifically in the Polish Navy, the French found a
loophole: small states were not subject to the treaty’s restrictions. This made the
construction of naval forces by an allied power doubly important in the French Navy’s
eyes. Seeing it as politically inexpedient to allow anyone else to help organize the Polish
Navy, Raiberti, the French Naval Minister, assigned Commander Charles Jolivet the
task.75
The Foreign Ministry had little confidence in the possibility of the French Navy aiding
Poland, arguing that in a conflict with Germany the border with East Prussia would force
the Poles to abandon their coastline to protect their capital. The Poles though, did not see
things this way and intended to protect their coastline with a navy. The primary purpose
of the Polish Navy was the maintenance of communications with and passage to Poland’s
ally France. At a 16 February 1924 meeting of the Polish Military Commission, General
Sikorski told its members that the effort Poland directed towards the creation of a suitable
base would decide the proportions of maritime aid that Poland would receive in the event
of a conflict. He also suggested, correctly, that the Treaty of Versailles, though it limited
the German Navy, would not prevent the collaboration of Germany and the Soviet Union
on the land, as well as on the sea. Clearly identifying the threats to Poland, Sikorski asked
that the members of the committee keep these factors in mind when rendering a decision
on what naval development plan Poland would follow: the ‘minimum’, or the
‘maximum’.76
Vice-Admiral Porębski and the Directorate of the navy drew up both of the plans
under consideration. The ‘minimum’ program foresaw the expenditure of 15,000,000
złotys (about £600,000) over a four-year period. One-third of this sum would go for the
defense and provisioning of Gdynia, the other four-fifths to purchase six submarines, one
oiler, a workshop ship, and material for existing vessels. The ‘maximum plan’ was much
more ambitious. It called for the allocation of 50,000,000 złotys per year for a 12-year
period, the money being used to purchase three light cruisers, eight destroyers, 12 torpedo
boats, and several patrol boats.77
Naczynski, of the National Catholic Club, believed that even the ‘maximum plan’
would not do enough to secure Poland’s lines of communication with its French ally. He
demanded the construction of 60 submarines, a number of torpedo boats, dozens of
minesweepers, modern transports and auxiliaries, and a naval air force composed of
dirigibles, balloons, and land and sea based planes of every type. He insisted that this
program could see completion in ten years through the annual expenditure of 5,000,000
złotys. Furthermore, Naczynski considered this immense undertaking his ‘minimum
plan’! The completion of this program would permit more building and produce Polish
domination of the Baltic. Needless to say, the government did not deem Naczynski’s plan
feasible. Because of financial reasons, the Poles adopted the ‘minimum plan’, with some
later revisions, as the foundation for constructing a modern navy.78
Basing their decision on a proposal prepared by Jolivet, the Polish Sejm soon
appropriated funding for nine submarines, six torpedo carrying and three minelayers. The
fact that the French drew up the Polish naval program clearly demonstrates the measure
of France’s naval influence. The competition for the contracts began immediately, with
initial inquiries coming from firms in France, Great Britain, Italy, and the United States.
The Poles attached three provisions to the awarding of the contract: training, credits, and
a promise that if during a war the Poles lost their naval base at Gdynia, a port for their
submarines would be provided elsewhere.79
The training issue and the base guarantee proved stumbling blocks in the path of a
British firm receiving the order. The French agreed to extend the basing privilege; the
British would not. Sir Max Muller, the British Ambassador to Poland, insisted that
providing such a base in wartime constituted a violation of international law and a hostile
act against the nation with which the Poles might be at war. His argument did nothing to
sway the Poles.80
The British did prove malleable on the issue of training. The Admiralty, which prior to
this time had refused to train foreign officers in submarines, had reversed its policy,
having come to believe that it hurt British naval prestige and handicapped British firms in
their competition with foreign businesses—a very accurate assessment. The Admiralty
also hoped that the change would generate industrial orders for British companies that
employed specialized technical workers that the Admiralty deemed ‘of great importance
to the maintenance of British naval strength’.81
The concession on training was not enough to win the contracts for Britain. The
French promised the base as well as the training. The French, who had a military alliance
with Poland, could make the offer of a port more easily than the non-aligned British.
Ironically, during the Second World War the surviving Polish submarines operated from
British ports.
In March 1925, the Polish Council of Ministers decided to build the nine submarines
in France over a four-year period and ordered the Polish Navy to only entertain bids from
French firms. This was the result Paris wanted, for military, industrial, as well as
commercial reasons that will be discussed below.82 Jolivet’s presence no doubt assured
this decision.
The Polish decision did not sound an end to British machinations. General Józef
Haller complained to now Rear-Admiral Jolivet that the British had been intriguing in the
Sejm in an effort to lend credence to the idea that if Poland conferred upon Britain the
care and organizing of the Polish Navy, it would not be necessary for Britain to formally
ensure Poland’s maritime communications and the security of its coast in the event of a
conflict. Jolivet considered this ‘a well-known trait of British politics’, in that Britain
attempted to create maritime protectorates of nations that cringed at the financial
exertions necessary for the creation and maintenance of a navy by seducing the small
states with imprecise promises of assistance. Through this, Britain removed any
significant need in the small state for a navy. Moreover, by becoming the patron of any
small fleet, the creation of which they could not prevent, the British hindered its
development. Haller argued that the best solution to British scheming was the
revitalization of the French Baltic Naval Division and more frequent visits of French
warships to the Baltic. This would also reinforce the belief that France could protect
Poland’s seacoast.83
Jolivet’s insistence that British involvement in the growth of a small fleet might
actually hinder rather than assist its development did on some occasions prove correct,
but usually out of incompetence on the part of Britain and not as the offspring of some
near-conspiratorial plotting on the part of crown officials. The Admiral’s assessment was
possibly a manifestation of the anti-British sentiment so prevalent in the French Navy.84
The French though, had many fears associated with Britain. One unknown official
penned a note insisting that the Poles had decided to order in Britain, a result that would
mean British advisors and technicians in Poland, and the eventual replacement of the
French mission. Moreover, if the British achieved naval dominance over Poland, France
would no longer be able to exchange war plans with the Poles because Britain was not an
ally.85
After deciding to purchase its submarines from France, the Polish Ministry of National
Defense dispatched a mission to Paris to examine the proposals. The Poles wanted the
submarines constructed over a four-year period, and allowed 18 months for the
completion of each boat, the delivery dates being staggered so that one vessel would be
completed about every six months. They hoped to have a single French firm build all of
the boats, or to have one company build the six torpedo submarines and another build the
three minelaying boats.86
Numerous French firms and consortia competed for the contracts. They included Les
Chantiers Navals Français de Caen, l’Union de Cinq Chantiers Français, Ateliers de la
Gironde, Les Forges et Chantiers de la Mediterranée, Les Chantiers de St Nazaire, Les
Chantiers de France, as well as a group composed of Les Chantiers Augustin-Normand,
Les Chantiers de la Loire, and Schneider. Some of the French companies encouraged the
French Navy to involve itself directly in the negotiations for the contracts. The navy
agreed to provide technical data, but preferred that the Polish government handle any
preliminary discussions, contractual matters, and the inevitable financial questions. The
French Navy also refused to examine in detail the validity of the projects submitted by
the competing firms. The service’s leadership believed that the time needed for this
would detract from the time it was devoting to its own new construction.87
The Poles wanted two types of submarines, standard torpedoarmed boats displacing
700 tons, and mine-laying vessels of 950 tons. The torpedo submarines envisaged were
actually superior to those of the French Navy in radius of action, stability, buoyancy, and
diving time. French naval officials doubted that the mine-laying vessels the Poles wanted
could have the armament, speed, and radius of action required by the Poles and still meet
the 950 ton limit. Demanding requirements that went beyond what many of the
contractors thought they could deliver was part of the naval building strategy of Admiral
Swirski, who became head of the Polish Navy in 1925. Swirski, realizing that Poland
would never have very many vessels, insisted that Polish ships be qualitatively superior
to other models in their respective classes.88
This also led the Poles to demand simple and robust submarines in the hope that this
would allow them to have a greater number at sea simultaneously. In the period prior to
the second World War, large navies usually only expected to have one-third of their
submarines on station in the combat area. The other two-thirds would be either
undergoing repair, or journeying to or from the combat zone. A simple design would
simplify maintenance and help the Poles avoid this. Moreover, they realized that it would
take their inexperienced crews quite some time to acquire the technical expertise to deal
with the most complicated machinery. By September 1925, Poland had narrowed the
competition to three groups of builders: Les Chantiers Navals Français de Caen, l’Union
de Cinq Chantiers Français, and the Normand/Loire/Schneider group.89
While Polish officials examined the proposals, the French government took an active
hand in managing the competition. On 14 September 1925, Monsieur de Sorbier, the
Director of Commercial Affairs for the Foreign Ministry, assembled the representatives
of Chantiers Navals Français and the Normand/Loire/Schneider consortium and asked
them to make an agreement to share the contracts. De Sorbier pressured his guests,
reminding them that competition between French industrial houses had already cost
France naval sales to several foreign nations, including Turkey. Moreover, he warned that
several other foreign firms, particularly Italian ones, had made attractive offers to the
Poles.90
After applying the stick, de Sorbier held out the carrot of French government
intervention with Warsaw, but this would only happen if Chantiers Navals Français and
the Normand alliance formed a cooperative bloc. De Sorbier approached only these two
competitors because he knew that they ranked the highest in the eyes of the Poles and
because Foreign Minister Aristide Briand had insisted upon his intervention.91
Competition from multiple French firms always worried Paris, and the Polish case was no
exception. They preferred that the interested French businesses form an entente and
submit a joint proposal. This eased the task of the local French political representative in
making recommendations and, more importantly, undercut non-French competitors.
The efforts of de Sorbier and Briand failed, however, and the meeting’s discussions
were ‘rather animated’ because the French builders had little interest in forming an
entente. Lucien Maréchal, the Vice-President of Chantiers Navals Français, and Marcel
Haas, of Chantiers de la Loire, agreed to a joint endeavor, but A.Litzellmann of
Schneider would not consent, citing the absence of the other French firm seeking the
order. But he did finally agree to consider the matter.92
The Poles began eliminating the competing firms, first striking Chantiers Navals
Français from the list, even though their case had been strongly lobbied by the Polish
Ambassador to Paris, Alfred Chłapowski. Chłapowski argued that financial concerns
made Chantiers Navals Français a good choice because the Paris-Bas Bank could then
finance the deal, though he neglected to mention that this bank owned an interest in
Chantiers Navals Français. The Ambassador argued hard for his chosen builder, insisting
that the quality would be assured, that they were 20 percent cheaper than the Normand
group, and that the faults of this firm, which had apparently been pointed out by the
French Navy, were hardly serious ones. Moreover, he asked that if they could not receive
the full order, perhaps they could have part of the order if they agreed to work with firms
of the Defense Ministry’s choosing.93
Chłapowski’s pleas fell on deaf ears. Chantiers Navals Français was eliminated from
the competition for the submarines for, among other reasons, two of the same points that
struck another contender from the list: no experience building submarines, and the advice
of Admiral Jolivet.94
One of the other remaining contenders, L’Union de Cinq Chantiers Français de
Constructions Navales, had no formal, legal existence, being simply a marriage of
opportunity among three of the firms competing for the submarine contracts. The trio,
Société des Forges & Chantiers de la Méditerranée, Société des Chantiers et Ateliers de
St Nazaire, and Société des Ateliers et Chantiers de France, joined forces at the end of
1924 in a quest for the contracts. Between them the three firms had five shipbuilding
yards, hence the name. They campaigned partially on the basis of the reputation and
experience of their chief engineer, Monsieur Doyère. Previously, Doyère had served as
the Director-General of Naval Construction for the French Naval Ministry, overseeing
some of the latest French submarine designs, as well as their construction.95
L’Union de Cinq Chantiers submitted the low bid among the final three competitors. It
was 7.5 percent less, but did not win them the contract. They believed, correctly, that one
of the weaknesses of their hand was that despite the experience of their engineers and
workers, they had never built a submarine. The firm’s competitors used this as a weapon
against them in what soon shaped up into a nasty fight between the various French rivals.
The other French firms sarcastically branded Cinq Chantiers ‘Chantier n’ayant pas
construit’. Because of this the firm, despite the technical superiority of its boats, decided
that it had to offer a lower price in order to compete.96
Lastly, the Poles considered the Normand/Loire/Schneider group. This combination
had the only experience in submarine construction among the three finalists. Schneider
had built 15 such vessels, Normand, one. The three firms planned to divide the work from
the orders. Loire would build either the standard torpedo-equipped submarines or the
minelaying boats, Normand the other class, and Schneider would manufacture the
engines for at least one of the categories. To the Poles, who wanted to avoid any risk in
the matter, the Normand group seemed the best choice. Jolivet also encouraged the Poles
to select this experienced consortium, especially if Warsaw wanted to reduce the chances
of adverse results.97
On 11 September 1925, General Sikorski decided to confer the contracts for the nine
submarines on the Normand/Loire/Schneider group. One of the defeated contenders,
l’Union des Cinq Chantiers Français, had contributed greatly to its own failure by a
disastrous effort to apply pressure on the General. They organized a press campaign
against him and supplied parliamentary deputies with a memorandum that violently
attacked Chantiers Navals Français de Caen and denounced the firm’s inexperience in
building submarines. They also vilified Swirski in the press through articles that falsely
accused the Admiral of incompetence and dishonesty. Attacking Swirski was doubly
stupid. He played a key role in influencing Poland’s final decision and certainly had
Sikorski’s ear. Jolivet had never given specific counsel to the Poles to exclude this firm’s
proposal, but he did, in a secret conference, approve Sikorski’s intention to confer the
contract on the more experienced Normand group.98
In some respects it comes as a surprise that the Normand combine received the
contract. Their initial price exceeded that of the other firms by 18 percent. Realizing that
this placed them in an inferior position in regard to the competition, they immediately
reduced the price by about 10 percent, thereby making the difference more acceptable to
Sikorski and the Commission.99 Fortunately for the Normand group, factors other than
price played a role. Warsaw’s fear of purchasing a vessel from a firm that had never
previously constructed submarines played a critical role. Political and economic
considerations also contributed to the final conclusion.
But not everything was settled, and Alfred Chłapowski, the Polish Ambassador to
Paris, still had a part to play. Early in the process he had attached great importance to
satisfying the Paris-Bas Bank, and made unsuccessful demands that the order for the
submarines go to Chantiers Navals Français, which was at least partly owned by Paris-
Bas. He had not changed his mind and returned to the matter in October, journeying to
Warsaw to try to influence the decision Sikorski and Swirski had already made.100
In addition to having the support of the bankers, Chantiers Navals Français counted a
number of members of the French government among its stockholders. Connected to this
was Poland’s then ongoing effort to secure a large loan from the French government. The
Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs, bowing to pressure from Chłapowski, also
campaigned on their behalf. Sikorski was unwilling to abandon his decision, but he also
proved unable to sufficiently deflect the Minister of Foreign Affairs.101
When Ambassador Chłapowski arrived in Warsaw, he met in a closed-door session
with General Sikorski. Admiral Swirski waited in the room outside. Sikorski came out
and asked Swirski: ‘Which ships are in the program next?’ Obviously, the General meant
Poland’s naval program, but the reality was that the Polish Navy had no immediate plans
beyond building the nine submarines. Swirski had assumed that this would keep his force
occupied for some time. Seizing the opportunity, the Admiral immediately replied: ‘Two
large destroyers.’ General Sikorski consented, provided that the order went to Chantiers
Navals Français. Swirski gladly approved and as a result, the Poles got two destroyers,
and pleased the Paris-Bas Bank, which meant that Warsaw got its loan. Chantiers Navals
Français was also happy, as were the corrupt French officials who had shares in their
yards, which at the time had been lying idle.102
Moreover, the result not only satisfied the Minister of Foreign Affairs, but also
allowed Sikorski and Swirski to avoid the inherent risk involved in awarding the contract
for the submarines to a firm that had never constructed such craft. Chantiers Navals
Français eventually received not only the contract for the two destroyers, but also that for
a floating dock destined for Gdynia. The Poles ordered the two destroyers in January
1926, and they were laid down in the summer. The order for the three minelaying
submarines came in April. It had been reduced from nine for budgetary reasons and none
of Swirski’s efforts could reverse the decision, especially after Piłsudski’s 1926 coup.
British diplomatic observers complained that the French firms received the orders only
because of a large French loan to Poland and a ‘lavish bestowal’ of Legions of Honor.103
Even though the Poles made the deal, they still harbored some concerns. In a situation
similar to that with the submarines, Warsaw did not want to take any risks with the
construction of the destroyers. In an effort to avoid any future problems, the Polish
government, through the auspices of Jolivet, asked that the projected destroyers be
constructed based upon the plans of a similar 1,500-ton French type that Chantiers Navals
Français had built previously.104
While the Poles investigated the French offers, competitors from Italy and Britain
reared their heads. Jolivet considered the Italians a threat because of their low prices. The
British presented a danger in other ways. In April 1925, Armstrong, Whitworth & Co
attempted to sell Poland two submarines nearing completion in the firm’s yards. Sikorski
turned them down, in spite of an offer by the Admiralty to provide training, because the
tonnage of the two vessels proved too great for Poland’s needs.105
With the conclusion of the submarine deal Jolivet wrote: ‘Thus ended the laborious
negotiations.’ But things were not quite over as the Poles, the French government, the
builders, and the consortium of bankers eventually brought in to finance the deal,
wrangled over payment conditions. But this was yet to come, and not unusual. Also, this
did not keep Jolivet from criticizing the French industrialists involved in the competition,
complaining that he could not praise the actions of some of those who did not receive the
contracts. He also believed that these same unnamed firms did not respect the fact that
their actions injured the overall cause of France,106 an obvious allusion to Chantiers
Navals Français.
Jolivet also condemned the lack of unity on the part of the builders, a discord that the
French officer believed had cost French industry 20,000,000 francs. He calculated this
loss based on the knowledge that the Poles did not reach their decision solely on the basis
of cost. Jolivet believed that the price agreed upon was too low and as a result would
generate in Poland a mistrust of French builders regarding the quality of their wares. The
Poles paid 10 percent less for their submarines than the French Navy, and received a
better ship. Jolivet believed that the French firms made a costly financial error in not
charging a higher price, for in his opinion the Poles would ‘well expect to pay more
dearly’.107
It was not until 2 August 1926 that the Poles signed the contracts for the destroyers.
Construction of the first ship began on 1 November 1926, the work on the second, a year
later. Obviously, the deal did not go unnoticed by the British, and after the news of the
awarding of the contracts appeared in the French press, the Admiralty made inquiries at
the Foreign Office as to whether or not the deal violated Article XVI of the Washington
Naval Treaty. This clause required signatories to notify one another upon the signing of a
ship construction contract, and France had not done so. The Foreign Office decided that
the French had indeed violated the Washington accords.108
The Foreign Office notified the US State Department about the matter and asked them
to make inquiries. But before the Americans addressed the issue, the French notified the
treaty signatories of the deal signed with the Poles. The British still believed that France
should have acted more promptly and hoped that the United States would yet discuss it
with Paris. The British course of action demonstrates the seriousness with which the
British approached the agreements concluded in Washington, and undoubtedly, some
anti-French sentiment as well. A Foreign Office official commented on the matter by
stating: ‘It is just as well to show other signatories that people are on the look out to see
the Treaty is strictly observed.’109 One wonders why they were not so diligent regarding
German violations of the naval articles of Versailles.
Jolivet’s naval activities were not limited to helping French firms win contracts. He
encouraged his superiors to hurry the transfer of the Desaix, not only because the failure
of such a move would hurt the training of the Polish Navy, but because French influence
would suffer as well. Moreover, Polish naval officers regularly went to France for
training, or to study at institutions such as France’s Naval War College.110
Generally, the older Polish officers had served in the Russian, Austrian, or German
navies, with veterans of the old Tsarist fleet forming the largest contingent. Of the
younger officers, the greatest part came from the coastal areas of Pomerania. In addition
to a naval training school at Torun, the Poles also established at Swiecé a training school
for non-commissioned officers.111
Critical to the development of Poland’s Navy was the construction of the port of
Gdynia. The Poles not only intended to use the site as their primary outlet for foreign
trade, they also meant for it to function as the Polish Navy’s chief base. The construction
of Gdynia largely resulted from the complicated political situation of Poland vis-à-vis the
free city of Danzig. In 1920, during the Russo-Polish War, the German dockworkers in
Danzig refused to unload ships carrying munitions destined for the Polish Army. This
convinced Warsaw that only the construction of a truly Polish-controlled port would
prevent any such disaster from occurring in the future. After examining several sites the
Poles settled on Gdynia, a spot about 15 miles west of Danzig. At the time, the small
town had no port or railroad facilities.112
On 23 September 1922, the Polish Parliament voted the money and the following year,
during Sikorski’s tenure as Prime Minister, the Poles drew up the plans. On 23 April
1923, Polish President Stanisław Wojciechowski, with General Sikorski, laid the
foundation stone of the first building—the Gdynia railway station. Intense work on the
port and its facilities began in 1924, with the Poles planning to complete its major
constructions by 1930.113
The project progressed slowly and was continually interrupted by financial problems.
When the port was completed, foreign observers found it an impressive place. The naval
base was well situated and there was ample room for expansion. This last point was very
important to the Poles, for one of their goals in building the port was to have facilities for
domestic warship construction. The eventual Polish strategic plan, envisaged in the early
1930s, and which foresaw 20 years to complete, called for the creation of the internal
industries necessary for building warships. Only the turbines would be purchased abroad.
The vessels would be constructed based upon plans acquired from other nations, a point
which played a critical role in some of Poland’s naval purchases in the late-1930s.114
The construction of Gdynia had a noticeable beneficial effect on the attitude of some
Polish officials toward naval matters. After 1928, Piłsudski demonstrated an increased
interest in the potential value of a Polish maritime force.115
CONCLUSIONS
The Anglo-French battle arose primarily from the efforts of British and French
businessmen and diplomats to increase the political and economic influence of their
respective nations in the small states of the Baltic littoral. Arms sales were seen as tools
for furthering both of these goals.
The initial impetus for the sales, though, came from the region’s respective
governments. The buyers initially courted the suppliers, not the other way around as the
polemical literature sometimes insists. There was also limited interest on the part of the
military forces of the nations supplying the arms. Naval officers such as Vennin and
Jolivet were indeed heavily involved in procuring orders, but the positions they held,
even though they were serving officers, entailed much more political activity than
military. The British Admiralty often proved exceedingly uncooperative and pursued
policies that made the sale of British material difficult, though pressure from politicians
and a concern for the economic benefit of Great Britain eventually forced a change in the
Admiralty’s rules. Institutional self-interest was also important because the Royal Navy
wanted to keep skilled shipyard workers practiced in their craft. This change though, had
nothing to do with advancing the defense preparations of any other nation.
The French Navy’s practices proved similar. Its leaders followed a policy of neutrality
and refused to favor, particularly in the case of Poland, the projects of one firm over those
of another. The French Navy did this even though they counted on the collaboration of
Polish warships in the event of hostilities, and the fact that many French officers viewed
the Polish Navy as a near extension of the French fleet. When Warsaw was examining the
French tenders, the French Admiralty gave the Poles access to its technical departments,
such as the Service Technique des Constructions Navales, and provided advice on
technical matters when the Poles requested it, but they did not take sides in the battle for
the contracts, despite the pressure upon them to do so.116
Corruption also played a role in the negotiation of armament contracts, particularly in
Latvia, as both Britain and France made use of Riga’s system of institutional bribery. In
Latvia, France proved the most successful, primarily because of Vennin’s investment in
his relationship with Keyserling.
But one wonders if the effort exerted by these powers, and the friction that the
competition produced, was worth a few contracts. Fear and contempt for their competitor
contributed to the intense economic rivalry between Britain and France, feeding relations
already soured by France’s Ruhr occupation, and wrangling over reparations and the
Dawes Plan. This tension between Britain and France grew before the backdrop of a
resolutely revisionist Germany, and at a time when the balance of power was slowly
beginning to shift back in Germany’s favor. It is obvious that some form of cooperation
would have better served all of the parties involved. London and Paris could have
cooperated economically and politically to ensure that the successor states received
suitable naval armaments. Additionally, the antagonism between the two Entente powers
did nothing to encourage faith in Britain or France, or the possibility of their future
cooperation in the area. Their rivalry only made the Eastern European positions of these
former Allies more untenable, undermined the cordon sanitaire, and by this, injured the
strategic position of the states of the Baltic much more than any supply of arms could aid
it.
NOTES
1. Brian Bond, ‘British War Planning for Operations in the Baltic Before the First and Second
World Wars’, in Göran Rystad et al. (eds), In Quest of Trade and Security: The Baltic in
Power Politics, 1500–1990, Vol. II, 1890–1990 (Lund: Lund University Press, 1995), p.
123; Sundbäck, ‘Finland in British Baltic Policy’, pp. 140–1, 245, 264–5; Bell, Royal Navy,
p. 60.
2. Gueslin, ‘La France et les pays baltes’, p. 121.
3. Hufvudstadsbladet, 2 Nov. 1920, cited in DMI to FO, 23 Nov. 1920, FO 371/5389;
d’Ythurbide, 18 Nov. 1920, and ‘Note sur la Marine Finlandaise’, 18 Dec. 1920, SHM,
1BB7 125 Finlande; Wihtol, ‘La pensée navale finlandaise’, p. 221.
4. ‘Note sur la Marine Finlandaise’, 18 Dec. 1920, SHM, 1BB7 125 Finlande.
5. Ibid.
6. D’Ythurbide, 18 Nov. 1920, SHM, 1BB7 125 Finlande.
7. Ibid.; Wihtol, ‘La pensée navale finlandaise’, p. 221.
8. ‘Chroniques des Marines Française et Étrangères: Finlande’, Revue Maritime (Aug. 1921),
126; Ekman, ‘Finland’s flotta’, p. 580; Annual Report on Finland for 1924, FO 371/10425;
Wihtol, ‘La pensée navale finlandaise’, pp. 222–3; Tidskrift i Sjöväsendet 8/23, cited in BIM
no. 23, 2 Oct. 1923, SHM, 1BB7 128 Lettonie.
9. Vennin, BIM no. 2, Feb. 1924, SHM, 1BB7 129 Lettonie; Tidskrift i Sjöväsendet 8/23, cited
in BIM no. 23, 2 Oct. 1923, SHM, 1BB7 128 Lettonie; Wihtol, ‘La pensée navale
finlandaise’, p. 224.
10. Vennin, BIM no. 2, Feb. 1924, and Vennin to MM, received 5 Aug. 1924, SHM, 1BB7 129
Lettonie; Hurstel to Ministre de Guerre, 11 Apr. 1924, SHM, 1BB7 127 Finlande; Wihtol,
‘La pensée navale finlandaise’, p. 224.
11. Vennin, BIM no. 2, Feb. 1924, SHM, 1BB7 129 Lettonie; Hurstel to Ministre de Guerre, 11
Apr. 1924, SHM, 1BB7 127 Finlande.
12. Vennin to Chef de 2ème Bureau, 29 July 1924, and Vennin to MM, received 5 Aug. 1924,
SHM, 1BB7 129 Lettonie.
13. Vennin, BIM no. 2, Feb. 1924, and Vennin to MM, received 5 Aug. 1924, and Vennin to
Chef de 2ème Bureau, 29 July 1924, SHM, 1BB7 129 Lettonie; Conway’s, 1922–46, p. 366.
14. Vennin to MM, received 5 Aug. 1924, SHM, 1BB7 129 Lettonie.
15. Vennin to Vice-Amiral, 19 May 1924, SHM, 1BB7 129 Lettonie.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid.
18. Military attaché, 20 Mar. 1922, file MID 2621–36, PBS, roll 10; Conway’s 1906–1921, p.
34.
19. ‘Lettland wird seine Kriegsflotille haben’, Latvijas Kareivis, 28 Oct. 1924, Auswärtiges
Amt, Po 14 Lettland; de Martel to Briand, 28 July 1921 and 28 Sept. 1921, and de Martel to
Poincaré, 9 Sept. 1922, AMAE, Lettonie 22; Suzanne Champonnois, ‘Colonel Emmanuel du
Parquet’s Mission in Latvia 1919–1920’, Journal of Baltic Studies 23 (Winter 1992), 325–8,
335.
20. Poole to Harrison, 29 Mar. 1922, file 860p.34/7, and Poole to Harrison, 30 Mar. 1922, file
860p.34/9, IAL, roll 4; Rigasche Rundschau, 31 Jan. 1923, cited in Coleman, 17 Feb. 1923,
file 860n.00/27, IABS, roll 1.
21. Egerton to Vaughan, ‘Report on Visit of Naval Attaché to Riga, 27th September -5th
October, 1923’, 8 Oct. 1923, FO 371/9273; Vennin to MM, 3 July 1923, SHM, 1BB7 128
Lettonie; Meister, ‘Den Lettiska flottan’, p. 300.
22. Vennin to MM, 3 July 1923, SHM, 1BB7 128 Lettonie; Vaughan to Curzon, 11 Dec. 1923,
in DBFP, ser. 1, Vol. 23, p. 1036.
23. Bulletin Information Politique (henceforth BIP) 34, BIM 38, 18 Dec. 1923, SHM, 1BB7 128
Lettonie; Latvian press extract, 10 Dec. 1923, cited in file 860n.00/27, IABS, roll 1.
24. BIP 34, BIM 38, 18 Dec. 1923; Rigasche Rundschau, 8 Dec. 1923, cited in BIP 20, BIM 30,
26 Dec. 1923, SHM, 1BB7 128 Lettonie.
25. Vaughan to FO, 22 Feb. 1924, FO 371/10376; Vaughan to FO, 15 Mar. 1924, FO
371/10369; Goodden, ‘Reports and Letters’, 15 Apr. 1924, Goodden Papers, IWM.
26.Goodden ‘Reports and Letters’, 15 Apr. 1924; Lowdon to Dept. of Overseas Trade, 11 Apr.
1924, FO 371/10369; Vennin to MM, 3 July 1923, SHM, 1BB7 128 Lettonie; Rigasche
Rundschau, Feb. 1924, cited in Vennin, BIP 4, 1 Apr. 1924, and Vennin to MM, 22 Mar.
1924, SHM, 1BB7 129 Lettonie; de Martel to Poincaré, 23 Jan. 1922 and 27 July 1923,
AMAE, Lettonie 22; report, 17 Mar. 1925, file MID 2775–5, and Swett, 15 Mar. 1925, file
MID 2775–3, PBS, roll 10.
27. Latvijas Wehstnesis, 25 Apr. 1923, cited in Coleman, 30 Apr. 1923, file 860n.50/7, and
Rigasche Nachrichten, cited in Coleman, 31 Aug. 1923, file 860n.50/15, IABS, roll 1.
28. Rigasche Nachrichten, cited in Coleman, 31 Aug. 1923, file 860n.50/15 and Jaunakas Sinas,
8 Nov. 1923, cited in Coleman, 12 Nov. 1923, file 860n.50/20, IABS, roll 1; Vaughan to FO,
18 Dec. 1923, and FO to Admiralty, 18 Dec. 1923, FO 371/9267; Riga Times, 12 Dec. 1925;
de Martel to Poincaré, 15 and 17 Oct. 1923, and de Martel to MAE, 17 Oct. 1923, AMAE,
Lettonie 22.
29. Riga Times, 16 May, 24 Oct., 14 Nov., and 12 Dec. 1925.
30. Vennin, 3 July 1923, and Vennin to MM, 26 Dec. 1923, SHM, 1BB7 128 Lettonie.
31. Vennin to MM, 3 and 13 July 1923, SHM, 1BB7 128 Lettonie.
32. De Martel to Poincaré, 9 Sept. 1922 and 11 July 1923, AMAE, Lettonie 22.
33. Vennin, 13 July and 25 Oct. 1923, SHM, 1BB7 128 Lettonie.
34. Vennin, 13 July 1923, ibid.
35. Vennin, 25 Oct. 1923, ibid.
36. Vennin to MM, 5 Sept. 1923, SHM, 1BB7 128 Lettonie; Richard F.Kuisel, Capitalism and
the State in Modern France: Renovation and Economic Management in the Twentieth
Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 71–6; Stephen A.Schuker, The
End of French Predominance in Europe: The Financial Crisis of 1924 and the Adoption of
the Dawes Plan (Chapel Hill, NC: UNC Press, 1976).
37. Vennin to MM, 17 Oct. 1923, and Vennin, 25 Oct. 1923, SHM, 1BB7 128 Lettonie; Vennin
to MM, 28 Feb. and 22 Mar. 1924, SHM, 1BB7 129 Lettonie; de Martel to Poincaré, 12 Mar.
1924, AMAE, Lettonie 22; Jaunakas Sinas, 27 May 1924, cited in Coleman, 9 June 1924,
file 860n.00/61, IABS, roll 1.
38. De Martel to Poincaré, 12 Mar. 1924, AMAE, Lettonie 22; Swett, 15 June 1925, file MID
2775–3, Swett, 20 July and 2 Sept. 1927, file MID 2775–10, and Arneman, 25 Feb. 1930,
file MID 2775–14, PBS, roll 10; Stockholms Tidningen, 31 Aug. 1927, cited in Harrison, 9
Sept. 1927, file 860p.348-, and Harrison, 10 June 1929, file 860p.248/1, no. 374, IAL, roll 4.
39. Harrison, 10 June 1929, file 860p.248/1, no. 374, IAL, roll 5.
40. Vennin to MM, 3 July 1923, SHM, 1BB7 128 Lettonie; Vaughan to MacDonald, 23 Aug.
1924, FO 371/10380; Meister, ‘Den Lettiska flottan’, pp. 300–1.
41. Naval attaché to Admiralty, 16 Apr. 1924, Vaughan, 18 Apr. 1924, and Admiralty to naval
attaché, 16 Apr. 1924, FO 371/10369; Meister, ‘Den Lettiska flottan’, pp. 300–1.
42. Vennin to MM, 8 Apr. and 12 Sept. 1924, French Legation to Keyserling, 23 Apr. 1924, and
Vennin to Keyserling, 23 Apr. 1924, SHM, 1BB7 129 Lettonie.
43. De Martel to Poincaré, 27 July and 17 Oct. 1923, and de Martel to MAE, 22 Nov. 1923,
AMAE, Lettonie 22.
44. Vaughan to FO, 18 Dec. 1923, and Mascre and Ovey, FO minutes, 1 Jan. 1924, FO
371/9267.
45. De Martel to Poincaré, 21 Dec. 1923 and Haas, 29 Dec. 1923, AMAE, Lettonie 22.
46. De Martel to Poincaré, 21 Dec. 1923, and de Martel to MAE, 22 Nov. 1923, AMAE,
Lettonie 22.
47. MAE, 4 March 1924, and Haas, 29 Dec. 1923, AMAE, Lettonie 22.
48. Haas, 29 Dec. 1923, AMAE, Lettonie 22.
49. Ibid.
50. MAE to de Martel, 11 Jan. 1924, AMAE, Lettonie 22.
51. Phipps to MacDonald, 15 July 1924, and Vaughan to FO, 15 July 1924, FO 371/10380;
Vennin to Vice-Amiral, 19 May 1924, and Vennin to MM, 12 Feb. 1924, SHM, 1BB7 129
Lettonie.
53. Vaughan to FO, 23 Apr. 1924, Carr, FO minute, 23 Apr. 1924, and Mounsey to Admiralty,
23 Apr. 1924, FO 371/10369; Vennin to Chef de 2ème Bureau EMG, 9 Apr. 1924, SHM,
1BB7 129 Lettonie; Merja Liisa Hinkkanen-Lievonen, British Trade and Enterprise in the
Baltic States, 1919–1925 (Helsinki: SHS, 1984), p. 211.
54. Vennin to MM, 23 July 1924, SHM, 1BB7 127 Finlande; Lescuyer to Herriot, 5 July 1924,
AMAE, Lettonie 22; Riga Times, 4 Apr. 1925; Nosworthy, ‘Visit to the Baltic States: 9th
May, 1924/2nd June, 1924’, WO 106/1573; Vaughan to FO, 15 and 30 July 1924, Phipps to
MacDonald, 15 July 1924, Lowdon to FO, 11 July 1924, and Lowdon to Dept. of Overseas
Trade, 29 Oct. 1924, FO 371/10380.
55. ‘Report of H.W.Lloyd, Military Attaché, Baltic States and Finland’, 26 Apr. 1926, FO
371/11735; Harrison to Secretary of State, 10 June 1929, file 868p.248/1, no. 374, IAL, roll
5.
56. Addison to Chamberlain, 5 Dec. 1928, FO 371/13271.
57. Ibid. An official noted that this report was ‘interesting and typical both of Latvia and Mr
Addison’, Collier, FO minute, 14 Dec. [1928], FO 371/13271.
58. Nosworthy, 1924, WO 106/1573; Annuaire Officiel de la Légion D’Honneur (Paris:
Librairie Aristide Quillet, 1929), p. 2376; MAE to EMG, 24 Sept. 1926, MM to MAE, 2 Oct.
1926, and ‘Note pour le service du protocole’, 5 Oct. 1926, AMAE, Lettonie 23.
59. Addison to Villiers, 4 Mar. 1929, FO 371/13982; Lescuyer to Herriot, 5 July 1924, AMAE,
Lettonie 22. It is possible that Savitsky and Sakovsy were the same individual. Mistakes
regarding the names of Eastern Europeans are common in the documents.
60. Addison to Villiers, 4 Mar. 1929, FO 371/13982.
61. Ibid. Addison, in another dispatch written in an attempt to ‘correct the impression which I
may have conveyed, in my despatch above-mentioned’, wrote ‘that the failure of Messrs.
Vickers to supply submarines was almost entirely due to their failure to make such
arrangements’, meaning bribery. He reiterated that he still believed the main reason that a
British company did not receive the contracts was the refusal of the British Admiralty to
provide training. He also revealed that the Vickers’ agent ‘gave to the proper person the
usual 2½% commission’ that was expected for the awarding of contracts. Addison does not
reveal the identity of the ‘proper person’, Addison to Chamberlain, 2 Jan. 1929, FO
371/13982.
62. Hinkkanen-Lievonen, British Trade, pp. 220–1.
63. Vennin to Chef du 2ème Bureau EMG, received 22 Feb. 1924, and Vennin to MM, 26 Feb.
1924, SHM, 1BB7 129 Lettonie; ‘Chroniques des Marine Français et Étrangères, France,
Marine de Guerre, Dans la Mer Baltique’, Revue Maritime (Dec. 1922), 817.
64. Vennin to Chef du 2ème Bureau EMG, received 22 Feb. 1924, SHM, 1BB7 129 Lettonie;
Vennin to MM, 21 Aug. 1923, SHM, 1BB7 128 Lettonie.
65. Leslie to Beardmore, 21 June 1924, FO 371/10380; DNI to naval attaché, 9 Nov. 1927, FO
371/12551.
66. MAE to Augustin-Normand, stamped 11 Feb. 1924, AMAE, Estonie 17.
67. Vienne to MAE, 13 Apr. 1925, and Vienne to Briand, 20 May 1925, AMAE, Estonie 17;
Vennin to Chef du 2ème Bureau, EMG, received 22 Feb. 1924, SHM, 1BB7 129 Lettonie.
68. Nosworthy, 22 May 1924, WO 106/1573; Nosworthy, July-August 1925, WO 106/1574;
Sundbäck, ‘Finland in British Baltic Policy’, pp. 267–8; Strang, 23 July 1925, FO
371/10975.
69. Meister, ‘Lituaischen Marine’, pp. 767–8; Conway’s, 1922–1946, p. 354; Andersons, ‘Die
militärische Situation’, p. 147.
70. Meister, ‘Lituaischen Marine’, pp. 768–9; Swett, 1 Mar. 1925, file MID 2775–3, PBS, roll
10; Vennin, 24 Sept. 1923, SHM, 1BB7 128 Lettonie; Mission Navale Française, 15 Feb.
1924, BIM no. 7, SHM, 1BB7 131 Pologne; Anderson, Latvia Past and Present, p. 452;
Andersons, ‘Die militärische Situation’, p. 147.
71. Robert A.Vitas, ‘Civil-Military Relations in Lithuania Under President Anatanas Smetona
1926–1940’ (MA thesis, Loyola University, 1986), p. 26.
72. Ibid., pp. 133–4, 136–7.
73. Ibid.
74. Sosnkowski to Dupont, 22 Jan. 1922, and d’Ythurbide to Panafieu, 23 July 1922, AMAE,
Pologne 45.
75. Jackson, ‘Naval Policy’, pp. 130, 134; s.i., MM to Ministre de l’Interieur, stamped 7 Nov.
1931, AMAE, Pologne 315; Raiberti to Ministre de la Guerre, 4 Aug. 1922, AMAE, Pologne
45.
76. Panafieu to MAE, 23 Nov. 1922, AMAE, Pologne 45; Rzeczposlita, 17 July 1924, cited in
BIP no. 34, 19 Aug. 1924, SHM, 1BB7 131 Pologne.
77. Panafieu to MAE, 23 Nov. 1922, AMAE, Pologne 45.
78. Ibid.
79. Jolivet to MM and attached note, 29 Sept. 1925, SHM, 1BB7 132 Pologne; Panafieu to
MAE, 25 Dec. 1924, AMAE, Pologne 42; Muller to Chamberlain, 28 Jan. 1925, FO
371/10999.
80. Muller to Chamberlain, 9 Feb. and 14 Apr. 1925, FO 371/10999.
81. Walker to FO, 28 Feb. 1925, FO 371/10999.
82. Warsaw to MM, 28 Mar. 1925, SHM, 1BB7 128 Pologne; President du Conseil to MM, 28
Mar. 1925, and Jolivet to MM, 31 Mar. 1925, SHM, 1BB7 132 Pologne; Salaün to MAE, 10
Dec. 1924, and Laroche to French Minister Warsaw, 12 Dec. 1924, AMAE, Pologne 42.
83. Jolivet to MM, 31 Mar. 1925, SHM, 1BB7 132 Pologne.
84. Ronald Chalmers Hood III, Royal Republicans: The French Naval Dynasties Between the
World Wars (Baton Rouge, LA: LSU Press, 1985), pp. 96–8.
85. ‘Note pour le President du Conseil’, 18 Mar. 1925, AMAE, Pologne 42.
86. Salaün to MM, 3 July 1925, Kłoczkowski to MM, 6 July 1925, and MM to Chłapowski, 5
Aug. 1925, SHM, 1BB7 132 Pologne; Polish Embassy to Chantiers de la Mediterranée, 20
Apr. 1925, Société des Forges & Chantiers de…, Société des Chantier & Ateliers de St
Nazaire, Société des Chantiers & Ateliers de…to Gevant, 25 May 1925, and Ambassade de
Pologne, 8 Apr. 1925, SHM, 1BB7 132 Pologne.
87. Vice-Amiral to Chef de la Mission Navale Française en Pologne, 7 May 1925, Jolivet to
MM and attached note, 29 Sept. 1925, and MM to Chłapowski, 9 Apr. 1925, SHM, 1BB7
132 Pologne.
88. ‘Direction Centrale des Constructions Navales’, 8 Apr. 1925, and MM to Chłapowski, 9
Apr. 1925, SHM, 1BB7 132 Pologne; Swirski, ‘Plany’, MAR AII 7/7, Swirski Papers, PISM.
89. Vice-Amiral, Chef d’EMG de la Marine to Chef de la Mission Navale Française en Pologne,
7 May 1925, ‘Note sur la Sousmission pour la Commande des Sousmarins Polonais’, n.d.,
‘Note de l’amiral Jolivet’, n.d., and attached note in Jolivet to MM, 29 Sept. 1925, SHM,
1BB7 132 Pologne.
90. ‘Note’, n.d., SHM, 1BB7 132 Pologne.
91. Ibid.; Wandycz, France and Her Eastern Allies, p. 341.
92. ‘Note’, n.d., SHM, 1BB7 132 Pologne; ‘Note pour Monsieur Berthelot’, 14 Sept. 1925,
AMAE, Pologne 42.
93. Union de Cinq Chantiers Français, n.d., SHM, 1BB7 132 Pologne; Swirski, 11 Sept. 1925,
and annex in Panafieu to MAE, 16 Sept. 1925, AMAE, Pologne 42.
94. Swirski, 11 Sept. 1925, and annex in Panafieu to MAE, 16 Sept. 1925, AMAE, Pologne 42.
95. Union de Cinq Chantiers, n.d., and Société des Forges & Chantiers de…, Société des
Chantiers & Ateliers de St Nazaire, Société des Chantiers & Ateliers de…to Gevant, 25 May
1925, SHM, 1BB7 132 Pologne.
96. ‘Note sur la Sousmission pour la Commande des Sous-Marins Polonais’, n.d., and attached
note in Jolivet to MM, 29 Sept. 1925, SHM, 1BB7 132 Pologne.
97. ‘Note sur la Sousmission pour la Commande des Sous-Marins Polonaise’, n.d., and ‘Sous-
Marins Polonais’, n.d., and attached note in Jolivet to MM, 29 Sept. 1925, SHM, 1BB7 132
Pologne.
98. Jolivet to MM, 29 Sept. 1925, Société Anonyme des Ateliers et Chantiers de la Loire to
MM, 16 Oct. 1925, and ‘Note de l’amiral Jolivet’, n.d., SHM, 1BB7 132 Pologne; Swirski,
‘Plany’, MAR AII 7/7, Swirski Papers, PISM.
99. Jolivet to MM, 29 Sept. 1925, SHM, 1BB7 132 Pologne.
100. ‘Visite de l’Ambassadeur de Pologne’, 12 Oct. 1925, AMAE, Pologne 42; Swirski,
‘Plany’, MAR AII 7/7, Swirski Papers, PISM.
101. ‘Compte-rendu de la séance de la Commission Militaire du 12 Octobre 1925’, and Société
Anonyme des Ateliers et Chantiers de la Loire to MM, 16 Oct. 1925, SHM, 1BB7 132
Pologne.
102. Swirski, ‘Plany’, MAR AII 7/7, Swirski Papers, PISM; Jolivet to MM, 29 Sept. 1925,
SHM, 1BB7 132 Pologne. Jolivet wrote that it was his idea to have Chantiers Navals
Français build the two destroyers. I am inclined to side with Swirski.
103. ‘Compte-rendu de la séance de la Commission Militaire du 12 Octobre 1925’, and Société
Anonyme des Ateliers et Chantiers de la Loire to MM, 16 Oct. 1925, SHM, 1BB7 132
Pologne; Poland: Annual Report, 1926, 3 Oct. 1927, FO 371/12580; Conway’s 1922–46, pp.
349–50; Peszke, Poland’s Navy, pp. 21–2; Przemsylaw Budzbon, ‘Wicher and Burza, Big
Ships of a Small Navy’, in John Roberts (ed.), Warship IV (London and Annapolis, MD:
Conway’s Maritime Press, 1980), p. 59; Swirski, ‘Plany’, MAR AII 7/7, Swirski Papers,
PISM.
104. See Note 99.
105. Ibid.; Muller to Chamberlain, 14 Apr. 1925, FO 371/10999.
106. See Note 99.
107. Ibid.
108. Fernet note for Vice-Amiral, 23 Nov. 1926, SHM, 1BB7 132 Pologne; Flint to FO, 18 Sept.
1926, and Craigie, FO minute, 23 Sept. [1926], FO 371/11187.
109. French Ambassador to FO, 4 Nov. 1926, and Campbell, FO minute, 10 Nov. [1926], FO
371/11187.
110. Jolivet to MM, 26 Jan. 1925, and EMG, Bulletin de Renseignements no. 1256, 29 Jan.
1927, SHM, 1BB7 132 Pologne.
111. Jolivet to MM, 26 Jan. 1925, SHM, 1BB7 132 Pologne.
112. Unrug, ‘Wie die Polnische Kriegsflotte entstanden ist’, pp. 200–1; P.Jordan and A.Janta,
Seafaring Poland (London: MaxLove Publishing, 1944), pp. 18, 21.
113. Baginski, Poland’s Freedom of the Sea, p. 99; Jordan and Janta, Seafaring Poland, p. 21.
114. Poland: Annual Report, 1926,3 Oct. 1927, FO 371/12580; Troubridge Diaries, 3 Oct. 1936;
Attaché Naval, 22 Nov. 1934, SHM, 1BB7 132 Pologne.
115. MAE to MM, 16 Aug. 1928, SHM, 1BB7 132 Pologne.
116. Vice-Amiral to Chef de la Mission Navale Française en Pologne, 7 May 1925, Lejeune to
Cabinet du Ministre, 21 July 1925, and Jolivet to MM, 26 May 1925, SHM, 1BB7 132
Pologne.
5
General Kirke’s Mission to Finland, 1924–25
In order to prepare a suitable and affordable naval bill the Finns invited a British military
mission to examine the nation’s defense needs. In 1924, the idea of a British military
mission to Finland was not a new one. It had originated with the Finns in 1919 when
Commodore von Schoultz had discussed the idea with Mannerheim. Schoultz then
brought the idea before the government, but with no result. At the time, the Finnish
government chose a French military mission and then supplemented it with a naval
mission from France for a short time after the First World War.1
The short-lived mission was an element of France’s alliance and influence building
strategy in the immediate post-First World War period. In February 1919, at
Clemenceau’s order, a mission comprising two air force and two army officers left for
Finland. To Mannerheim, the mission’s purpose was to instruct the army. But the French
had other tasks for it as well, including intelligence gathering and conducting propaganda
on France’s behalf. Similarly, the French dispatched missions to Poland, Czechoslovakia,
and Romania. The French hoped to tie these states to France’s alliance strategy by having
them adopt French arms and military methods.2 The important economic advantages that
might result from such missions also became increasingly important.
In late 1923, the Finnish government appointed a combined civilian and military
committee to examine the nation’s defenses. The proposals issuing from the group bore
little relation to the amount of money that the Finns could possibly afford. For example,
the sum the committee required for coastal defense alone amounted to £5,000,000, a sum
greater than two years of Finland’s military budget. The proposal horrified civilian
officials and worried army officers; the latter feared that their own requirements would be
sacrificed to the needs of coastal defense and, indeed, sometimes this was the case.3
At the time, the Finnish government had under consideration proposals to spend about
300,000,000 Finnish marks, nearly £2,000,000, on defense. The government, citing the
opinion of many Finns that the nation’s military officers lacked the necessary technical
experience to carry out their duties, decided to seek military advice from abroad before
submitting any military spending proposals to the Diet. The Finns, at least initially,
wanted a British commission that would advise on coastal, naval, and air defense, a group
for which the Finns would pay all expenses. Finland also wanted the mission sent in as
unobtrusive a manner as possible to avoid any unnecessary comments from the Finnish
press. Approaching Britain for such advice was a new turn for Finland. Previously, they
had sought the services of France and Germany. Major-General Walter Mervyn St
George Kirke, who eventually led the British team, attributed the shift in Finnish policy
to the efforts of Sir Ernest Rennie, the British consul in Helsinki. To London, Kirke’s
mission had two purposes: to counter French influence, and obtain orders for British
armaments firms.4
The initial Finnish request arrived on 20 March 1924. The Finns wanted the mission
purely for defensive reasons and had no aggressive intentions. Moreover, the Finns had a
strong desire to get the best value for their modest funds. Finland wanted British experts
to advise on the nation’s sea defense and coastal fortifications, particularly the artillery
batteries, taking into consideration the available materials. The Finns also wanted to
know how air power could be used in coastal defense and whether or not aircraft could
replace some of the units then being used to protect the nation’s maritime frontiers.5
The Foreign Office gave its blessing to the mission, though they expressed doubts as
to whether or not it would ever materialize. The British government worried that the
mission might arrive in Finland at a time of political crisis in the Finnish high command,
an allusion to infighting between the Jägers and their supporters and the former Tsarist
officers. The Admiralty approved of sending British advisors to Finland—if the Finns
agreed to pay all the expenses involved in such a venture.6
Meanwhile, Commodore von Schoultz, the head of the Finnish Navy, met with
Captain W.de M.Egerton, the British naval attaché in Helsinki, and discussed the
possibility of a purely naval mission to Finland. The meeting provides insight into some
of the problems within the Finnish high command. Schoultz was not aware that the
Finnish government had requested a joint British military mission. Egerton believed that
von Schoultz’s ignorance of current Finnish policy resulted from the fact that the entire
command structure was in the hands of the army and that ‘it appears to be their policy to
keep the Navy as much as possible in the background’. Egerton believed that the planned
addition of a naval officer to the General Staff might result in better communication
between the service arms.7
Finland wanted some type of mission, but several factors greatly concerned the
Finnish government. Perpetually poor, it worried about the cost of the mission and
because of this wanted it to include as few personnel as possible. The British were asked
to suggest the composition of the mission and the rank and number of officers needed, as
well as the mission’s duration. Initially, the places that they were to consider were limited
and included areas in the Gulfs of Finland and Bothnia, as well as the northern and
western shores of Lake Ladoga. But the Finns eventually decided that they wanted the
mission to examine the defense of Finland’s entire frontier, both land and sea, including
the Karelian isthmus. However, it was only to consider land defense that ‘depended on
naval actions, as e.g. bombardment of the coast, landing of armed forces with the purpose
of surrounding field armies, or cutting off their communications, etc’. The northern parts
of Finland, meaning the frontiers between Finland and Sweden, were not considered
critical, a clear indication of who Finland saw as its enemy. The regions of vital
importance included the area from Turku (Åbo) to the eastern end of the Gulf of Finland,
and the northern and western coasts of Lake Ladoga.8
After learning of the mission’s terms of reference, the British agreed that they could
not suggest a team any smaller than ten members. They proposed that a chairman, whose
rank and branch of service would be determined by the British military authorities, lead
the mission. Assisting him would be officers from the three branches of the British armed
services who had a variety of military skills: two from the navy, two from the army, and
two from the air force. Two secretaries and one draftsman would also be needed and the
team would take two months in Finland to fulfill the assignment. The Finnish Minister of
General kirke’s mission to finland, 1924–25 83
Defense had had in mind a much smaller staff, perhaps two or three members. But von
Schoultz agreed with the British estimate.9
The officials also discussed the critical matter of expense. The British estimated that
the proposed mission would not cost more than £2,000 per month and prepared an
itemized salary list that included a twelfth mission member and a typist. The British
expected the Finns to pay for travel expenses to and from Finland and also to make
contributions to the pension funds of the participating officers during the time they spent
in Finland. The British pointed out that if Finland spent the entire projected amount, the
cost of the mission would equate to only 0.1 percent of the anticipated budget, a sum
approximate to the cost of 12 sea mines.10
The British and the Finns both looked favorably on the possibility of the mission. The
French had a different attitude, or at least the British believed they did. One official
reported that ‘French intrigue was very hot in Finland; they had somehow got to know all
about our proposed Mission and were extremely annoyed about it’. Rennie, when
informed, said that the French were ‘deeply disliked by the Finns’ and mentioned that it
was unlikely that the French would be ‘able to affect their [Finnish] decisions in any
way’.11
Official notification of Finland’s desire for the mission came in early June 1924. The
Finns agreed to the proposed composition, as well as to pay the salaries and travel
expenses of the commission members. It was anticipated that the mission would last two
months and that therefore the necessary personnel should arrive in Finland before the end
of June.12
Hjalmar J.Procopé, the Finnish Minister for Foreign Affairs, was ‘anxious’ for the
dispatch of the experts. The Finns wanted them to study the defenses of the southern
coast of Finland as well as Lake Ladoga, including both the inland and coastal defenses.
The exact details of the work they would undertake would be settled after their arrival in
Finland. The Finns did not intend to ask the experts to offer advice on the defense of the
Gulf of Bothnia or the northern areas of Finland that border Sweden.13 Again, this reveals
much about Finnish fears, and the shifting nature of exactly what the Finns wanted the
British to do shows much about the relationship between the government and their
military commanders.
The Finns expressed some concern over the official name; they disliked the terms
‘Naval and Military Mission’ and ‘Commission’. Procopé said that such terms ‘would
give an air of permanency to the body of officers’ and that it also could ‘give rise to
undue comments’ in both the Finnish and foreign press. In the end, the Finns left the
issue of leadership and the mission’s final composition to the British.14
The War Office recommended that a high-ranking army officer serve as the mission’s
head. The Foreign Office agreed, citing as the basis for their decision the higher state of
development of the Finnish Army when compared to the Finnish Navy and Air Force.
Others in the British government possessed little enthusiasm for the project. In January
1924, the first Labour government took office. Ramsay MacDonald, the new Prime
Minister, quickly granted de jure recognition to the Soviet Union, something other British
governments had previously refused to do (though they would trade with them), and soon
embarked upon efforts to strengthen Great Britain’s political and economic ties with
Moscow. C.P.Trevelyan, the President of the Board of Education, protested the timing
chosen to send a ‘large military commission to teach Finland, one of Russia’s neighbors,
how to arm themselves most effectively against her’. He also contended that this
constituted a ‘definitely unfriendly act to the Russian Government and for that reason
alone I suggest to the Cabinet that it ought to be stopped’. Trevelyan also reminded the
British government of the criticism it had leveled at France for the manner ‘in which it
had been arming and instructing in matters its various vassal nations in the East of
Europe. It is most objectionable that we should begin to play the same game.’15 The
Minister’s comments, especially his criticism of armament policy, though a bit alarmist,
do demonstrate the minor shift in the foreign policy views of some government officials
during the short-lived Labour government. Trevelyan’s outburst might also demonstrate
the influence of the pacifist and pro-Soviet wings of the Labour Party.
The Foreign Office considered the objections of the Board of Education unwarranted.
Finland possessed only rudimentary defenses and the Foreign Office refused to believe
that Finland, either with or without the temporary help of a commission of experts, could
pose a serious menace to the Soviet Union. The Foreign Office also did not like having a
British mission compared with a French one. They insisted that similar projects
undertaken by France tended to be larger and of a longer duration. French officers
serving with such missions also generally held command positions within the forces for
which they provided advice. In the case under discussion neither the Finns nor the British
anticipated any long-term commitment; Britain was merely responding to a Finnish
request. The diplomats insisted that the mission would continue despite the objections of
the Board of Education—if the Army Council still agreed. The Council did, and hoped to
dispatch the mission around 15 July 1924.16
By 8 July 1924, the British had assembled the necessary personnel. Procopé and others
in the Finnish government were pleased that the British had agreed to send the advisors,
and happy with the terms concluded. Some also believed that the British acted from an
attitude of ‘disinterest’, a perception that the British hoped and tried to impress upon the
Finns. To command the mission the British authorities selected Major-General Sir Walter
Mervyn St George Kirke, an officer of the Royal Artillery who had served in India and
China, as well as on the Western Front during the First World War. This proved a wise
choice. General Kirke worked diligently and quickly, generally keeping the needs of the
Finns in the forefront of any decision, an unusual attitude for French and British officials
working in the eastern Baltic. The mission came to Finland about the middle of July
1924, an event that was kept very quiet. Neither the Commander-in-Chief of the Finnish
forces, General Wilkama, nor the Chief of Staff, General Enckell, received official word
of its arrival.17
After meeting with the Minister of Defense, General Kirke realized that no substantial
political or strategic groundwork existed upon which to base the suggestions of the
British mission. The Minister of Defense could also provide Kirke with no solid estimate
of the amount of money available for the specific services. Kirke suggested a
comprehensive survey of Finland’s defense problems before making any expenditure.
The Finnish government agreed. General Kirke wrote: ‘I thus found myself in the
position of Minister of Defence having to allot tasks and funds as between the three
Services, each of which naturally considered itself entitled to the Lion’s share.’18
Six weeks later, General Kirke and his officers had reconnoitered the country and filed
a report detailing their recommendations regarding the navy, coastal defense, and the air
force. The British experts cautioned that the needs of the army should be considered
equally and expressed their view that the requirements of the ground forces were among
the most urgent. The recommendations went to the Revision Committee and, after much
argument, were adopted six months later. The government was ‘enchanté’ with the
mission’s progress statements and Kirke wrote that the group’s report would not only
give the Finns better coastal defenses, but also save them several hundred million marks.
However, some were not so pleased with the work of the mission, or with its
recommendations. The inspector of coast defenses, an ex-Russian officer, protested
against the cuts in the funding estimates for his service from £5,000,000 to about
£500,000. The head of the navy also pressed the Revision Committee to adjust its
expenditure proposals upward. The air force accepted the British advice and as funding
became available it moved its development along the proposed lines.19
Kirke’s handling of the mission bought much goodwill for Britain. At the beginning of
his tenure in Finland, Kirke made it clear that he wished to complete his work as quickly
as possible in order to pass on the financial savings to the Finnish government. He sent
some of the mission personnel home within six weeks, earlier than expected, and also
intended to return home himself before the mission’s scheduled end. This, according to
General Kirke, was a ‘novel’ experience for the Finns. He insisted that previously, the
Finns had had a difficult time getting rid of earlier German and French advisors, the
French mission being particularly difficult to dislodge. Kirke believed that the French
‘having found a soft job tried to stick to it as long as possible’. The remainder of the
British personnel, except for Kirke and a staff officer, sailed on 11 September 1924.20
The various branches of the British military did not always assist Kirke’s endeavors to
keep the mission’s costs to a minimum. The British military wanted the Finnish
government to assume the expense of the salaries of the officers sent to Finland, an outlay
that the armed forces would have borne in any circumstance. General Kirke encouraged
his government to find ways to keep Finland’s costs down and asked that they not charge
the Finns with expenses that the government would normally bear. Kirke was anxious to
keep costs low in an attempt to convince the Finns of ‘disinterest’ on the part of the
British, hoping, in turn, that this would result in orders for British industry, an attitude
that clearly reveals Britain’s hope for the mission. Rennie supported Kirke’s efforts and
pointed out (incorrectly) to his superiors that the French only dispatched missions if
contracts were placed in France, the result being the creation of a bad impression. Rennie
insisted that keeping down the mission’s costs would bring benefits to British industry
that far outweighed any additional expenses the government might incur. The Foreign
Office agreed and asked the three service heads to do as the pair recommended. The
Admiralty, at least, bent. Kirke also attempted to have the cost of instruction fees lowered
so that Finnish air officers could receive training in Britain. The Treasury refused to
allow a reduction in these charges for any foreign officers.21
Kirke’s conscientious efforts paid extra dividends for British influence. The Finns
were pleased and impressed with Kirke’s work, enough so that they asked the General to
remain in Finland until the end of the year to help in the reorganization of the Finnish
Army. The Commander-in-Chief and the Chief of the General Staff also wanted Kirke to
stay. Both had only recently taken up their appointments, the former commanders having
been relieved from their positions (probably a result of Finland’s ‘purge’ of non-ethnic
Finns from the upper rungs of its officer corps) shortly after the arrival of the British
mission.22
Kirke accepted the offer and travelled to Britain in September to bring Lady Kirke to
Helsinki. The couple arrived in Finland at the beginning of October, accompanied by
Lieutenant-Colonel P.L.W. Powell. Powell came to meet the Finnish request for the loan
of an army officer for six months, with the possibility of this period being extended. The
Finns gave Kirke a free hand and he anticipated completing his work by Christmas. He
attempted to have the question of army reorganization transferred from the Revision
Committee to the General Staff. Subsequent to Kirke’s appointment, the Committee had
spent eight months debating what should be done in regard to the army, without reaching
a conclusion. Kirke’s efforts proved futile and he attributed his failure to the Chief of the
General Staff, who being ‘new to his post, was afraid of responsibility, and had not the
experience necessary to enable him to assert himself’. The Revision Committee also did
not want to relinquish control because of their own desire to do the job. The Finnish
government also preferred that the responsibility for defense recommendations remain in
the hands of the Committee. Its members were drawn from many different parties in the
Finnish political spectrum and the government wanted them to be directly responsible for
the conclusions reached so that their respective political groups would be committed to
finding the necessary funding. On strictly military matters, the Committee invariably
accepted Kirke’s advice.23
Kirke did not like the slow pace of the Revision Committee and his hope of departing
around Christmas proved futile. But, he wrote that this ‘was natural, seeing that they were
all busy men and many of them with little knowledge of the subject, though intensely
anxious to do their best’. Other factors also added to the extension of his stay. Army
officers responsible for preparing reports on the cost of various proposals had promised
them by January. These had still not arrived by the time of the General’s departure at the
end of March 1925. To hurry the Finns, Kirke proposed coming home several times, once
soon after Christmas 1924. He reported that this had ‘an instantaneous though temporary
effect’.24
Kirke’s presence and Finnish satisfaction with his activities and those of the other
British officers did not prevent the Finns from also looking elsewhere for military advice.
In early September 1924, near the end of the tenure of the British mission, Finland
dispatched a group of leading Finnish naval officers to study the naval situations in
Germany, Holland, and the Scandinavian countries. A British observer commented that
Finland had ‘determined to have recourse to as many countries as may be for guidance in
their task of reorganizing the defensive forces of their country’. During this same period,
the Finnish Minister of Defense asked for permission to retain five foreign military
experts for the new army staff school scheduled to open on 3 November 1924. Included
among these were one French, one Italian, and one Swedish officer.25
Kirke’s intervention did prevent the appointment of a French advisor to the Finnish
Air Force. Under an old agreement, General Enckell of the Finnish Army went to Paris
sometime around Christmas 1924 to arrange for a French air officer as an instructor and
air advisor to the Finnish government. Kirke, when he learned of this through the Finnish
Air Force, pointed out to the Minister of Defense, as well as to the Foreign Minister, that
simultaneously seeking the advice of two nations would be useless and ‘fatal to the
efficiency of the Finnish Air Force, and that if they were definitely committed to the
French, it would be best for us to go at once’. A meeting of the Finnish Cabinet followed
and its members voted unanimously that Kirke should stay and that France should be sent
Finland’s regrets. Moreover, the Cabinet decided to request the services of a British air
officer for two years. The British government agreed and Squadron Leader Field arrived
in March 1925.26
In the end, what recommendations were offered by General Kirke, particularly for the
navy, and did the Finns implement them? Firstly, Kirke believed that the Finns should
quickly reorganize the military command structure, as one branch of the army frequently
did not know what the other was doing. He suggested that they use the British War Office
as a model. The British also recommended the creation of a Finnish Navy as an
independent service not tied to the coastal defense command structure. Kirke thought that
placing warships under the command of army coastal defense officers would hinder naval
operations and fail to take advantage of what he saw as the ‘enterprising nature of the
Finnish character’. He also argued against placing the coastal defense forces under the
command of the navy, believing that in the event of a successful invasion defensive
operations would become primarily an army show. Kirke also did not want the Navy
burdened with the problems entailed in coast defense. He believed that the Navy needed
to concentrate on its own development so as to emerge as an efficient force. To him, this
was burden enough.27
To Kirke and his staff the naval forces of Finland had several purposes: (1) to force
the concentration of enemy units, which would hurt any efforts at blockade and make
enemy ships susceptible to submarine attack; (2) to attack single enemy vessels; (3) to
launch naval attacks in combination with aircraft; and (4) to force the enemy to devote
resources to convoying unarmed vessels—‘in short, hamper his freedom of action on the
seas’. To accomplish these tasks the British argued that Finland needed air and naval
forces, but not at the expense of the army. The army, correctly, was seen as the most
important arm. Aircraft were considered useful to the army, naval forces not as much so.
Kirke did believe that the Finns needed some naval units and felt that they would utilize
them effectively. He wrote that the Finns were ‘naturally a sea-faring people, possessing
numerous small craft and a knowledge of how to use them, and an endeavour should be
made to put these factors to good use’.28
The British mission also filed exhaustive reports evaluating the extensive coastal
fortifications that the Finns had inherited from the Russians. Elements in the Finnish
military wanted to arm most of these sites with the numerous artillery pieces that had
been acquired upon the collapse of the Tsarist regime. Kirke believed that making an
effort to erect fixed defenses to protect the entire coast was not only impractical, but also
unnecessary. Enacting such a plan would, in his opinion, result in a ‘useless diversion of
funds’ that could be better spent on the field army. It would also contribute to making
Finnish defenses weak everywhere. Kirke argued for the installation of coastal batteries
at strategic points along the coast in order to protect Finland’s ports and other important
installations.29
Kirke also pushed for the standardization of coastal defense weapons. The Finns had a
myriad of old Tsarist artillery, some of which had been purchased from US firms, ranging
from light 47mm pieces to 12-inch guns. Kirke suggested that in the interest of efficiency
the shore guns should be of three types: 75mm (these could also act as anti-aircraft guns),
6 inch, and 10 inch.30
The British mission also argued against the creation of an extensive network of coastal
fortifications because of the amount of personnel that manning such installations
required. The coastal defense forces already suffered from a shortage of officers, and the
expansion of this service’s duties would only exacerbate the problem. The construction of
batteries at strategic sites only would allow the concentration of scarce personnel. Kirke
also recommended that most of the servicemen assigned to coastal defense duties be
Schutz Corps (militia) members wherever possible. This would release additional men
from the younger and more fit classes for service in the regular army.31 This desire to
prevent the dissipation of Finland’s manpower resources in order to provide the Finnish
Army with sufficient cadres was one of the dominant elements influencing Kirke’s
recommendations.
The General also believed that the Finns had inordinate fears of a Soviet amphibious
assault and the shelling of Finnish cities by the Red Navy. He wrote: ‘Finland must take
some chances, and history shows that it is safer to take chances with the Russian fleet
than with the Russian Army.’ He argued that Finland’s best defense against a Russian
amphibious assault was the use of mobile reserves and aircraft. A railway runs along the
southern coast of Finland and Kirke believed that the Finns would have no problems
massing sufficient strength to throw back any Soviet invasion force that made it to shore
through a gauntlet composed of coastal guns, the Finnish Navy, and the Finnish Air
Force. Similarly, attacks launched across the ice during winter would also be very
vulnerable to attacks from the air.32
Kirke also argued that the possibility of coastal bombardment on the part of Soviet
warships would be at best slight, an assessment that the Winter War would later prove
correct. The many islands that dot the coast of Finland force any bombarding warships to
take up stations a great distance from the intended target. This prevents accurate
observation of the site under attack, except by the use of aircraft. In the days before radar,
unless aircraft could stay over the target, the bombardment proved ineffective. Coastal
guns, which generally have greater accuracy than their shipboard counterparts, would
also make getting too close to a Finnish port a dangerous proposition for a Soviet
warship. These same islands also inhibit the movement of enemy warships along
Finland’s shore and the confined waters force vessels to operate singly or in small
groups. These units would be very vulnerable to Finnish naval attacks.33
The British also offered advice on the composition of the Finnish Navy. The main
elements would be three gunboats, or more accurately, armored coastal defense ships.
The British recommended 2,500-ton vessels with a shallow draft (12–14 feet), with 6-
inch guns for the main armament. Kirke advocated three such vessels so as to always
have one at sea. The British also arrived at this number because the information that
Great Britain then possessed on the Red Navy led Kirke to believe that, at best, the
Soviets would be able to keep only three destroyers on station at a time. Additionally, if
the Soviets armed their available merchantmen, they might be able to muster an
additional three vessels. It was felt that the armored ships would be able to deal with any
threat from enemy destroyers, as well as protect coastal shipping. Kirke’s commission
recommended the immediate building of one armored ship, so that the lessons learned
from its construction and use could be utilized in the building of its sisters.34
The British plan foresaw at least three 400-ton submarines complementing the
armored ships. Kirke recommended buying these abroad, preferably from Great Britain,
in order to take advantage of British experience. British builders were more
knowledgeable than those in any ‘available’ nation. This would result in a larger
expenditure for the submarines, but the Finns would reap the benefit of British
experience. Kirke advised the construction of subsequent vessels in Finnish yards.
Additionally, the Finns also had the old, Russian submarine AG.16, upon which they had
already spent 19,000,000 marks for hull and machinery repairs. Kirke proposed an
examination of the vessel to see if it could be outfitted as a training ship. Because of its
age and condition he did not believe that the Finns should seek to make it an active part
of their navy. As a complement to the submarines, the British recommended the purchase
of a submarine parent ship.35
Kirke’s mission also advised the construction of barges that would be equipped with
12 inch cannon left in Finland by the Russians. Inspired by the British experience in the
Dardanelles in 1915, and along the Flanders coast in 1917–18, these weapons were meant
for defensive use against attacking enemy warships under the cover of Finland’s many
islands.36
Kirke argued against the purchase of new CMBs, believing the money better spent on
aircraft capable of carrying torpedoes, something that he believed, correctly, would
become increasingly efficient in subsequent years. The British recommended that the
Finns equip 50 vessels for minesweeping and that they purchase the necessary paravanes
for this, as well as numerous extras. Defensive minelaying played a role in the British
plans and included sowing the areas around Bjorkö, Vyborg, Vasa, and Kotka. A field
would also be laid between the Åland Islands and Sweden in order to protect Finland’s
communications. At the time of Kirke’s tenure, the Finns had 1,834 mines in storage. The
General recommended the purchase of an additional 500.37
In the end, the British concluded that the Finns should spend 423, 914, 340 Finnish
marks over a six-year period for the improvement and expansion of their navy. This
figure included money for personnel expenses, maintenance, and work on a number of
bases, as well as the moving of one base. The latest Finnish program drawn up for the
navy and coastal defense before Kirke’s arrival had called for the expenditure of
684,974,840 Finnish marks.38
General Kirke left Helsinki on 24 March 1925. The Finns were very pleased with his
work, especially his businesslike approach. They regretted his departure and offered their
hopes that he would soon return. Kirke, as well as officials of the British government,
believed the mission a complete success, and their comments on it demonstrate the
primary purposes for dispatching the mission: influence and contracts. Kirke believed
that the mission had produced an ‘invisible gain to British prestige’ and that it had
established good relations with the military leaders in Finland, particularly the Jäger
officers, a group the British had previously perceived as pro-German, and who were also
the most important group in the Finnish military. In regard to the Navy he wrote: The
extent to which British influence predominates will depend entirely on the extent to
which the British Admiralty is prepared to help in training officers.’ The Finns were
particularly eager to send young officers to the United Kingdom for submarine training,
and Kirke wrote: This is probably the only chance of getting any share for British yards
in the work of the new Naval programme.’ Kirke believed that relations between Finland
and Britain would continue to improve steadily, the result being ‘good effects on
commercial relations’ between the two states.39 This remained to be seen.
Despite his positive hopes for the future, Kirke was convinced that ‘the scales are
heavily loaded against British firms’. He identified several obstacles, the first being the
cost of French goods, which tended to be less than those from Great Britain. General
Kirke also noted the French government’s policy of sometimes providing financial
support to firms doing business with foreign countries, as well as the strong official
encouragement from the French government. He also believed that the French tactic of
awarding medals to influential military and political personnel, as well as ‘the
propaganda of French officers who are practically agents for armament firms’, also
hindered the British cause. Finally, Finnish officers often had seen only French
material.40
General Kirke’s complaint regarding the French policy of awarding medals had
particularly strong merit. During the 1920s, the French gave the Legion of Honor to
numerous important Finnish officials, many of them naval officers. Included among these
were Commander Einar-Wilhelm Schwank, 11 January 1923, and Commander Yrjö
Roos, 23 July 1924, both of whom were future heads of the Finnish Navy. Important
dignitaries receiving the medal included Dr Rudolf Holsti, 22 April 1920, and Hjalmar
Procopé, 22 November 1928. Commodore von Schoultz also held the award.41
Despite the threat from French competition, Kirke did not view France as the greatest
danger. He saw the Italians and Swedes, both of whom had their advocates in Finland, as
Britain’s most important competitors. France, Italy, and Sweden had all accepted Finnish
officers to various military training schools and the Italians had even allowed the Finns to
serve in command positions.42
In an effort to strengthen Britain’s economic chances, General Kirke advocated the
granting of preferential treatment toward Finnish officers regarding invitations to British
maneuvers. In Kirke’s view, the Finnish Army and government would greatly appreciate
this and ‘it would probably lead to practical results when new equipment had to be
purchased abroad’.43
Foreign Office officials held similar views. They believed that the appointment of a
British air advisor indicated that the Finns were looking increasingly toward Britain.
They also believed that if Finnish naval officers sent to Britain for training received a
good welcome the ‘commercial results may very well be considerable’. A Foreign Office
minute summed up in one sentence British hopes for General Kirke’s mission: There is
no doubt that the mission has enhanced our prestige & let us hope that commercial results
will follow.’44
The recommendations of the mission had a limited effect on the development of the
Finnish Air Force and Army, but little impact on the Navy and Coast Defense forces. The
British advice received a ‘harsh reception’ from the naval officers. The mission’s
recommendation that Finland remove many of the coastal defense guns was rejected. The
Finnish high command could not understand why Kirke’s mission had made such a
decision and refused to accept it. The Finns also disagreed with Britain’s advice on the
caliber of the guns for the planned coast defense ships, believing it insufficient for their
needs. The Finns also did not like Kirke’s conclusion that CMBs were useless for
Finland. The Finnish Navy considered them very necessary. Moreover, the torpedo boats,
as well as the armored ships and submarines, were weapons that the Finns had the
potential to construct, at least partially, in their own yards. This too was an important
factor in their defense considerations,45 and correctly so.
In the end, the direct impact of General Kirke’s mission in regard to the navy and
coastal defense was minor. The naval high command generally rejected the British
proposals while the army and air force took many of them to heart. Most of the detailed
recommendations were not followed and Rudolf Holsti insisted that this left Finland in
a’less favorable’ position against the Soviet Union in 1939.46
The mission did succeed in changing Finnish attitudes toward Great Britain, therefore
increasing British influence, and probably did soften the views of the Jägers toward Great
Britain. The French also viewed it as a great success for their British opponent.47 Despite
this, the British continually assumed, incorrectly, that the pro-German feelings of the
Jägers equated to anti-British attitudes. This was in no way a correct assessment.
The British cause was also dealt a severe blow by the resolution of the language
dispute in Finland. In the early 1920s, many factions in Finland complained bitterly that
many high political, military, and governmental positions were occupied by Finns of
Swedish ancestry. This resulted in a campaign to remove many of the influential
Swedish-speaking Finns from their jobs and replace them with Finnish speakers. The
Swedish-speakers in the military also tended to be former Tsarist officers, another group
that the more radical of the Jägers disliked. The Jägers played a key role in the campaign
to remove these older officers and some of those who lost their positions were
sympathetic to Great Britain, and were also the very men with whom the British were
accustomed to dealing.48 Important among these was Commodore von Schoultz.
Schoultz, the head of the Finnish Navy in the first half of the 1920s, was a former
Tsarist officer and a veteran of the Imperial Russian Navy. During the First World War,
he had served as a liaison officer with the British Grand Fleet. Present at the Battle of
Jutland, Schoultz made comments on the fight in his memoirs that caused a furor in Great
Britain. Schoultz criticized Admiral Jellicoe for breaking off the engagement in the
evening, failing to take precautions to enable the British fleet to maintain contact with the
enemy, and not sending his destroyers to launch night attacks against the Germans.
Schoultz believed that these mistakes cost the British the opportunity to continue the
battle the following day. Though many in Britain did not appreciate his remarks, Schoultz
maintained excellent relations with the British officers with whom he had served. The
Commodore still had many friends in the Royal Navy and was generally well liked by
British officials; no doubt his fluent English helped in this respect. His presence helped
further the cause of good relations between Britain and Finland. Possibly because of his
German-appearing name, some French observers accused him of being a
‘germanophile’.49
In Finland, in 1926, a law requiring knowledge of the Finnish language to hold a
military post came into force. Officers were required to take a rigid language
examination, which Commodore von Schoultz failed. The Commodore spoke excellent
Russian, English, German, and French, but did not speak Finnish well enough to pass the
exam. He was forced into retirement, as were a number of other naval officers. A Finnish
observer lamented Schoultz’s departure by writing that ‘there is nobody to take his
place’.50
The Finns filled the recently vacated command posts with younger officers who would
not normally have been awarded such senior slots. Commander Yrjö Roos moved into
Commodore von Schoultz’s position in May 1925; he was only 35. Roos died in August
1926, his untimely death a result of a carbon monoxide leak in a minesweeper, the
noxious fumes being accidentally pumped into the unfortunate officer’s cabin.
Commander Achilles Sourander replaced Roos. In 1929, Commander Einar Schwank

became the head of the Finnish Navy.51
The retirement of Schoultz cost the British one of their greatest allies. The Jäger
victory in the linguistic struggle resulted in many of them filling positions of power that
they had not formerly held. Though they were not necessarily pro-German, they were
more inclined to deal with Germany than their predecessors. Kirke’s mission did produce
an increase in British influence in Finland, but it was a short-lived bounty.52
Not long after Kirke’s mission, the Admiralty began to take the appointment of naval
missions and naval advisors more seriously. The effects of the Washington treaties and
lower governmental spending on ship construction began hurting Britain’s ability to
produce the naval armaments that it needed. Obviously, in the eyes of the Admiralty this
was an enormous security issue, and they began searching for ways to alleviate the
problem. They tried granting subsidies for new construction, but by the mid-1920s it had
become clear that this would not solve the problem. Soon, the Royal Navy saw Britain’s
declining naval armaments industry as the greatest threat to British sea power, even more
so than the Royal Navy’s true enemies: France, and most dangerous of all, the Treasury.
The Admiralty began to see foreign orders as the solution.53
To protect its naval arms industry the Admiralty became very supportive of pursuing
foreign orders. They believed that the best way to win them was through sending naval
missions, naval advisors, and naval attaches, and even to provide subsidies to the
potential customers. Moreover, naval missions could counter French influence, and the
Admiralty’s agreement to send a mission to Romania was partially motivated by a desire
to keep the French from doing so. Also, Romania, like the Baltic States, was seen a portal
to Russian trade. This was a clear reversal of the 1919 Royal Navy decision against the
dispatch of missions.54 The worsening economic conditions of the interwar period would
force more changes in Admiralty policy.
NOTES
1. Rennie to Egerton, 17 Dec. 1923, FO 371/10421.
2. Hovi, Cordon Sanitaire, pp. 213–14.
3. ‘Report by Major-General W.M.St G.Kirke, on the British Mission to Finland (July 1924 to
March 1925)’ (hereafter ‘Kirke Report’), in Kirke to WO, 4 Apr. 1925, FO 371/10990.
4. Ibid.; Rennie to MacDonald, 24 Mar. 1924, FO 371/10421; Sundbäck, ‘Finland in British
Baltic Policy’, pp. 260–1.
5. ‘Kirke Report’, 4 Apr. 1925, FO 371/10990; Rennie to MacDonald, 6 Apr. 1924, FO
371/10421.
6. Carr, FO minute, 9 Apr. 1924, WO to FO, 30 Apr., 8 May 1924, Creedy to FO, 1 May 1924,
Mounsey to Rennie, 5 May 1924, Walker to FO, 8 May 1924, Carr, FO minute, 9 May 1924,
Murrack to FO, 9 May 1924, and WO to Nosworthy, 17 May 1924, FO 371/10421.
7. Egerton to DNI, in Rennie to MacDonald, 14 Apr. 1924, FO 371/10421.
8. Nosworthy report on meeting with von Schoultz (hereafter ‘Nosworthy’), 27 May 1924, FO
371/10421; Egerton report on meeting with von Schoultz (hereafter ‘Egerton’), 27 May
1924, FO 371/10421; Lt Colonel F.P.Nosworthy, ‘Visit to the Baltic States, 9 May,
1924/2nd June, 1924’, Appendix III, ‘Translation of the Minutes of the Anglo-Finnish
Conference Held At Helsingfors on May 24th 1924 From the Official Finnish Report’
(hereafter Nosworthy, ‘Minutes’), WO 106/1573.
9. Nosworthy, 27 May 1924, and Egerton, 27 May 1924, FO 371/10421; Nosworthy, ‘Minutes’,
WO 106/1573.
10. Nosworthy, 27 May 1924, and Egerton, 27 May 1924, FO 371/10421.
11. Nosworthy, ‘Minutes’, WO 106/1573.
12. Rennie to FO, 28 May, 3 June, 7 June 1924, FO 371/10421; Goodden to WO, ‘Reports and
Letters’, 30 May 1924, IWM.
13. Rennie to MacDonald, 9 June 1924, and Rennie to FO, 7 June 1924, FO 371/10421.
14. Rennie to MacDonald, 9 June 1924, FO 371/10421.
15. Creedy to FO, 13 June 1924; Carr, FO minute, 12 June 1924, and President of the Board of
Education to FO, 17 June 1924, FO 371/10421; Sir Curtis Keeble, Britain and the Soviet
Union, 1917–89 (London: Macmillan, 1990), pp. 94–8; Andrew J.Williams, Labour and
Russia (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1989), p. 11.
16. Carr, FO minute, 19 June 1924, Mounsey to WO, 17 June 1924, and WO to FO, 27 June
1924, FO 371/10421.
17. WO telegram sent by FO to Rennie, 8 July 1924, and Rennie to MacDonald, 5 and 9 July
1924, FO 371/10421; ‘Kirke Report’, 4 Apr. 1925, FO 371/10990.
18. Kirke, ‘Autobiographical Notes’, pp. 15–17, LHC, Kirke Papers, file 26; ‘Kirke Report’, 4
Apr. 1925, FO 371/10990.
19. ‘Kirke Report’, 4 Apr. 1925, FO 371/10990; letter from General Kirke to Lady Kirke, 20
Aug. 1924, LHC, Kirke Papers, file 7/14.
20.‘Kirke Report’, 4 Apr. 1925, FO 371/10990; Kirke, ‘Autobiographical Notes’, pp. 15–17,
LHC, Kirke Papers, file 26.
21. Forbes interview of Rennie, 4 Nov. 1924, and Gregory to WO, War Ministry, and
Admiralty, 4 Nov. 1924, FO 371/10421.
22. ‘Kirke Report’, 4 Apr. 1925, FO 371/10990; Rennie to MacDonald, 1 Sept. 1924, FO
371/10421; letter from General Kirke to Lady Kirke, 25 Aug. 1924, LHC, Kirke Papers, file
7/15; Kirke, ‘Autobiographical Notes’, pp. 15–17, ibid., file 26.
23. Kirke, ‘Autobiographical Notes’, pp. 15–17, LHC, Kirke Papers, file 26; ‘Kirke Report’, 4
Apr. 1925, FO 371/10990; telegram for Kirke in Rennie to FO, 30 Aug. 1924, Carr, FO
minute, 30 Aug. 1924, and Carr or O’Malley to Rennie, 3 Sept. 1924, FO 371/10421.
24. ‘Kirke Report’, 4 Apr. 1925, FO 371/10990.
25. MacKillop to MacDonald, 9 Sept. 1924, FO 371/10421.
26. ‘Kirke Report’, 4 Apr. 1925, FO 371/10990; Sundbäck, ‘Finland in British Baltic Policy’, p.
260fn.
27. Kirke, ‘Memorandum on office procedure’, 18 Jan. 1925, file BFM 25, Finnish Military
Archives (henceforth FMA), Puolustusrevisionin Arkisto (hereafter PRA); Kirke,
‘Memorandum on the Organisation of Command: With Special Reference to the Relations of
Army, Navy, and Air Force to the Command of the Coast Defence’, 17 Dec. 1924, file BFM
32/24, FMA, PRA. I am indebted to the late Commodore Erik Wihtol, Finnish Navy (Ret.),
for the Finnish archival documents on the Kirke mission.
28. Kirke, ‘Relative Value of Sea and Air Forces in the Special Circumstances of Finland’, n.d.,
file BFM 25, FMA, PRA.
29. Kirke, ‘Principles of Coast Defence’, 25 July 1924, file BFM 16/25, FMA, PRA.
30. ‘Further Report on the Fixed Defences of the Finnish Coast, as a result of reconnaissance
from land, sea, and air’, n.d., file BFM 8/24, FMA, PRA.
31. Ibid.
32. Kirke, ‘Principles of Coast Defence’, 25 July 1924, file BFM 16/25, FMA, PRA; Kirke,
‘Note on Sea and Coast Defence, Report of Revision Committee’, 6 Mar. 1925, file BFM
15/25, FMA, PRA.
33. Kirke, ‘Principles of Coast Defence’, 25 July 1924, file BFM 16/25, FMA, PRA.
34. Kirke, ‘Naval Proposals’, 24 Aug. 1924, file BFM 8/24, FMA, PRA.
35. Ibid.
36. Wihtol, ‘La pensée navale finlandaise’, p. 225.

37. Kirke, ‘Naval Proposals’, 24 Aug. 1924, file BFM 8/24, FMA, PRA.
38. Ibid.; Hornburg[?], ‘Naval Estimates’, n.d., file BFM 29, FMA, PRA.
39. ‘Kirke Report’, 2 Apr. 1925, FO 371/10990; Rennie to Chamberlain, 26 Mar. 1925, file
6/32, LHC, Kirke Papers; Nosworthy, ‘Report on Tour of Baltic States and Scandinavian
Countries by Lieut.-Col. F.P.Nosworthy, July-August 1925’, WO 106/1574; Kirke to HBM’s
Minister, file BFM 17/25, 17 Mar. 1925, FMA, PRA; P.Salmon, ‘British Security Interests
in Scandinavia and the Baltic 1918–1939’, in John Hiden and Aleksander Loit (eds), The
Baltic in International Relations Between the Two World Wars. Acta Universitatis
Stockholmiensia 3. Studia Baltica Stockholmiensis (Stockholm: Center for Baltic Studies,
1986), p. 120.
40. Kirke to HBM’s Minister, 17 Mar. 1925, file BFM 17/25, FMA, PRA.
41. Annuaire Officiel de la Légion D’Honneur, pp. 2287, 2289; d’Ythurbide report no. 116, 7
Nov. 1920, SHM, 1BB7 125 Finlande.
42. Kirke to HBM’s Minister, 17 Mar. 1925, file BFM 17/25, FMA, PRA.
43. ‘Kirke Report’, 2 Apr. 1925, FO 371/10990.
44. Randall, FO minute, 17 Apr. 1925, and s.i., FO minute, 21 Apr. 1925, FO 371/10990.
45. Letter from Commodore Erik Wihtol to the author, 5 Feb. 1996; Wihtol, ‘La pensée navale
finlandaise’, p. 226.
46. ‘Present Political Situation in Northern Europe’, Holsti Memoirs, p. 20, Hoover Institute,
Holsti Papers.
47. De Coppet to MAE, 30 Mar. 1925, AMAE, Finlande 9.
48. Pekka Kalevi Hamalainen, ‘The Nationality Struggle Between the Finns and the Swedish-
Speaking Minority in Finland, 1917–1939’, Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 1966.
49. Report, 1 Apr. 1924, BIM no. 4, and Vennin to 2ème Bureau, EMG, received 22 Feb. 1924,
SHM, 1BB7 129 Lettonie; Annual Report on Finland for 1921, 14 Feb. 1922, FO 371/8100;
Commodore G.T.J.von Schoultz, With the British Battle Fleet: War Recollections of a
Russian Naval Officer, trans. Arthur Chambers (London: Hutchinson 1925), p. 179.
50. Rennie to Chamberlain, 11 Feb. 1926, and Rennie to Orde, 23 Mar. 1926, FO 371/11751;
Hornburg to Kirke, 13 Jan. 1926, file 7/26, LHC, Kirke Papers.
51. Kirke, ‘Naval Proposals’, file BFM 8/24, FMA, PRA; letters from Commodore Erik Wihtol
to the author, 21 May and 26 June 1996; Riga Times, 21 and 28 Aug. 1926.
52. Kirke was confident that Finland could defend itself against the Soviets. See Major-General
W.M. St. G.Kirke, ‘Modern Finland’, Journal of the Royal United Service Institution 70
(Nov. 1925), 734–47.
53. Bell, Royal Navy, pp. 149, 182.
54. Ibid., pp. 152–4, 182–3.
6
New Contracts, New Competition, New
Corruption, 1926–32
The years 1926–32 produced the second intense period of competition for the naval
contracts in the eastern Baltic. It also marked the time when the world financial situation
produced the prosperity that allowed these states to purchase warships, as well as the
advent of the Great Depression that destroyed many hopes for future expansion. After the
full onset of the worldwide economic malaise, the small states of the eastern Baltic found
it exceedingly difficult to scrape together funding for naval purchases.
Much also changed in French and British strategy during these years. Immediately
before this period, in October 1925, the Western European states signed the Locarno
agreement. This launched Britain into a rare strategic commitment to the continent, but
London did nothing to prepare militarily to uphold their promise to guarantee the borders
of Western Europe. But the treaty did signify, at least among some officials, the
awareness that Britain’s defensive frontier began on the Rhine. Some in the British
government, Lord Curzon for example, in 1924, even dared to suggest that perhaps
Germany might be a future threat to Britain.1 This marked a retreat from previous British
certainty that France was the true menace.
The year 1930 saw the London Naval Conference. Here, British cruiser strength was
reduced as a result of pressure from the United States, pacifists, and Britain’s poor
economic state. Great Britain, the United States, and Japan extended the Washington
agreements for five more years, but France refused, citing German construction. Italy
also did not agree to an extension of Washington, citing French construction. The London
Conference did not please the French Navy, and Admiral Jean Darlan felt personally
insulted when their hosts convened the meeting in the Trafalgar Room of St James’s
Palace.2
France’s idea of an alliance and barrier system in Eastern and Central Europe
remained very much alive. By the mid-1920s, France, in Briand’s words, ‘wanted to
regard and treat Poland and the Little Entente as a single barrier’.3 Army planning
included this through most of the 1920s, but as the mandatory term of military service
declined, and with it the size of the French Army, the military’s plans shrank as well. The
French Army’s European war plans assumed offensives from its bases in the occupied
Rhineland, but the fall in available army numbers through the 1920s saw this plan
converted to a fighting retreat by 1929. This same year French leaders began worrying
about a sudden and damaging German attack, or attaque brusqué, into France. Though
the fear was premature, it produced a push to build fortifications along the German
border that eventually became the Maginot Line.4 The early evacuation of the Rhineland
in 1930 marked the shift in French military strategy to one which assumed that France’s
operations in the early stages of a war with Germany would be largely defensive.
After 1930, French strategy moved toward its 1940 form. The French, using the
Maginot Line to funnel the Germans, combined with an advance against the German path
of attack through Belgium, planned to create a continuous front against the Germans. A
defensive war, fought in Belgium, would follow. This might last two years, but it would
give the French time to build up for an offensive strike, while weakening the Germans.
The army placed its faith more in defensive, rather than offensive forces, and built their
army to match their strategy.5 The navy would support the French war effort by securing
the supply lines to the empire and potential allies, just as they had planned since the end
of the First World War. Navy war plans still assumed a conflict against Germany and
Italy, without British assistance.6
The years 1926–32 also produced shifts in the pattern of naval sales in Latvia, Poland,
and Finland, while Estonia remained loyal to its former supplier. This period also saw the
arrival of a new contender for the naval contracts—Germany. Eventually, and in spite of
the restrictions of Versailles, the Germans played a decisive role in Finland’s naval
development, a point discussed in Chapter 7.
ESTONIA
In 1930 the Estonians once again tried to expand their navy through the purchase of
British warships. Though thwarted initially, this episode eventually produced results. The
Estonians wanted to buy two or three 400 ton British submarines to replace their two
destroyers and the other units of their fleet, all of which were rapidly approaching the
limit of their usefulness. Estonia wanted construction to begin in 1931, and to string out
the payments over six or seven years. The Estonians also recommended the inclusion in
the price of an additional 5–6 percent ‘to provide funds to meet certain additional
expenditures such as are inevitable in many countries where government contracts are
concerned. Payment from the funds in question to be made later after consultation
between the Estonian authorities and Vickers representatives.’7 Why the Estonians made
such a request remains unclear. But it hints at the endemic corruption in the Baltic States
when awarding government contracts.
The Estonians also insisted that no local agents should be involved in the sale and that
the British Consul should handle the negotiations between Vickers and the Estonian
government. Admiral Hermann Salza, the Commander-in-Chief of the Estonian Navy,
was a good friend of Admiral Keyserling, and the Latvian Admiral had told Salza of the
incident with Sakovsky, the local Vickers agent in Riga. This probably accounts for
Estonia’s unwillingness to have any dealings with him.8
The construction of the submarines was discussed with Vickers’ representative Sir
Trevor Dawson. In April, Vickers agreed in principle to a five- or six-year term of
payment, the details to be settled in later meetings. Officials at the Foreign Office
believed, ‘more from T.Dawson’s manner than from his actual words’, that Vickers was
so anxious to get the contract that, if the Estonians would increase slightly the amount
they were willing to spend, Vickers ‘would meet them in the matter of long term credit to
an extent that they would not have dreamt of doing in former years’.9 The economic
difficulties facing Britain’s shipbuilders were beginning to have an effect.
New contracts, new competition, new corruption, 1926–32 97
Meanwhile, rumors circulated that an unnamed Dutch firm, undoubtedly

N.V.Ingenieurskantoor voor Scheepsbouw den Hague (IvS), backed by the German
corporation Germania Werft, was making an effort to get not only the Estonian contract,
but also one proposed for additional Latvian submarines. The firm had just completed a
vessel for the Finnish government, and reportedly proposed the construction of vessels in
Latvia and Estonia. Moreover, IvS had designed a 250-ton submarine for the Estonians in
1924.10
A firm deal for the submarines did not materialize quickly. In July 1930 Salza
informed the British that his government had not yet moved on the matter because it was,
as in the past, having a difficult time finding the money. One Estonian official suggested
that Vickers send in its prices and terms of payment before the government made a final
decision, insisting that this would make it easier for the Estonians to go to their
Parliament for the funds.11
The French were also interested in obtaining the order and Foreign Ministry officials
hoped to use the well-known friendship between the chiefs of the Latvian and Estonian
Navies to their advantage. Two firms, Maison Wurms and Chantiers de la Loire,
approached the French government for individual support in negotiations with the
Estonians. As became typical for France in the interwar period, French officials urged the
formation of a consortium, believing that the legation would be ‘embarrassed’ if it had to
lobby for multiple French builders. The Wurms executives refused, citing an uncertainty
that Chantiers de la Loire wanted the association. This produced a French government
insistence that the involvement of two separate French offers would only serve to further
British interests. Later, a third firm, Augustin-Normand, contacted Admiral Salza,
leading to additional laments by Briand on the failure of French firms to cooperate, and,
by their refusal, hurting France’s chances of winning the order.12 In the end, Estonia’s
poverty meant that any orders would be years away.
In 1933, the Estonian government sold its two former Russian destroyers to Peru for
2,500,000 kronor ($410,000). With the money from the sale and the funds saved from no
longer having to pay the high maintenance costs of the vessels, Estonia embarked upon a
small naval building program. After the quick death of a pair of more ambitious
proposals, the Estonians drew up an expansion plan that included two minelaying
submarines, four motor torpedo boats, and 12 seaplanes. In December 1933, the Estonian
Parliament voted 9,000,000 kronor in credits over five years to build two submarines and
three torpedo boats, a total meant to include the money received from the destroyer sale.13
Some elements of the Estonian press expressed outrage at the sale, accusing the
government of selling off the entire navy. The criticism became so intense that there
arose in Narva a public campaign for abrogation of the sale on the grounds that it left
Estonia without maritime defenses for the period between the closing of the deal and the
arrival of the new units.14
Then, in the words of the Agrarian Party newspaper Kaja, the story took a ‘truly
scandalous turn’. The Estonian government received $410,000 for the two ships, but the
Peruvian Parliament voted $750,000 for their purchase. The question on everyone’s lips
was: ‘Where was the rest of the money?’ A Chamber commission and the Minister of
Justice launched government-backed inquiries, while the speakers of the Agrarian and
Socialist parties attacked the former Tônnison government and the other personalities
responsible for the ‘underhanded deal’. The press accused government officials of
‘complicity and embezzlement’.15
Initially, the middlemen who arranged the deal, Bing and Company of Hamburg and
Moritz Magnus, Jr, were reported to have received the missing $340,000 for arranging
the deal. These firms were consistently referred to as ‘Jewish’, or ‘Israelite’, particularly
by the Agrarian press. But Bing and Company was the real corporate culprit. On the heels
of the revelations concerning the terms of the deal, Bing’s representative in Tallinn,
General of Reserve Lebedev, was arrested in Riga on 22 January 1934, and turned over to
the Estonian authorities. Undoubtedly, his possession of $70,000 in cash cast some
suspicion upon him.16
The arrests did not stop with General Lebedev. General Tôrvand, who had served as
the Army Chief of Staff, and Kerem, a former Defense Minister, followed him into gaol.
The subsequent investigation revealed massive irregularities surrounding the sale. Bing
and Company had given Lebedev two payments of £6,000 each for ‘winning the good
dispositions of the interested Estonian services’. General Lebedev provided only some
very vague explanations as to what the money had been for. Moreover, it came to light
that the offer of another house to mediate the deal, Kliaguine, in Paris, had not even been
considered. Continuing its determined campaign against the entire matter, the Agrarian
newspaper Kaja called it the ‘most scandalous affair’ since Estonian independence and
concluded that ‘the international sharks (Bing and Co.) assisted by their local agents,
have realized enormous benefits’. The trials saw Tôrvand and Kerem acquitted, a result
that angered some, and relieved others.17
The scandal did not prevent the Estonian naval program from going forward, and
might have made its completion more likely, since the Estonian public became convinced
that the nation’s coastline stood undefended. A number of new firms entered the fray, the
Finnish company Crichton-Vulcan of Åbo among them. The ever-vigilant Estonian press
quickly announced that Crichton-Vulcan was not a Finnish firm, but a German one,
something the Finnish Minister to Estonia, Hynninen, roundly denied. Some newspapers
concluded that doing business with this builder meant the surrendering of Estonia’s
economic independence to the ‘Hitlerian Reich’.18
The Estonian press had once again hit the mark. Krupp owned Crichton-Vulcan and
had established it before the First World War to build torpedo boats for the Russian
Navy. Later, ownership had been transferred to Dutch and Swedish hands to camouflage
the firm’s German control.19
Another French company also entered the competition, and French diplomats
instructed Schneider-Creusot to work in conjunction with the other competitors from
France. By October, the Estonians had offers from four French builders, Chantiers de la
Loire, Augustin-Normand, Schneider-Creusot, and Wurms, as well as Vickers, Crichton-
Vulcan, Italy’s Tosi, and Monfalcone, and a Japanese firm. As always, the French were
as eager to win the deal as the British, and the French businessmen pestered their
diplomats to intervene on their behalf.20
Papillon, the French naval attaché for Finland and the Baltic States, believed that the
advantage lay with Vickers because it was a British firm and Great Britain had
contributed so much to the founding of Estonia. But he also saw Crichton-Vulcan as a
prime competitor because the Estonians counted upon naval cooperation with Finland to
protect themselves from the Soviet Union. Moreover, the prices from both of these firms
were nearly the same. The best French offer, that of Chantiers de la Loire, was 10 percent
more, and for a smaller displacement boat. Papillon suggested offering training, noting
that the Estonians considered practical instruction on the boats critical. The French
Foreign Ministry saw no advantage in this and balked, believing, incorrectly, that the
presence of Estonian officers at the Ecole de Guerre served the same purpose.21
As the time approached for making a decision on the submarines, the Estonian
government, prodded by Socialist deputies on the Finance Commission, began exploring
the possibility of doing as much of the submarine construction as possible in their own
yards. If this could not be done, they wanted to know if foreign firms could do the work
in Estonia.22 Submarine building proved too advanced for Estonian industry, but its desire
for internal construction is not surprising when one considers the experience of Finland
(see Chapter 7), which had embarked upon cooperative shipbuilding efforts a few years
earlier. Moreover, this was an early attempt by one of the region’s small states to break
its dependence upon a foreign power for warships.
In the end, the contract for the two submarines went to Vickers-Armstrong, the
Estonians making the decision in March 1934; the price: $1,000,000 per boat. The
French, and particularly Schneider-Creusot, were disappointed. Their efforts to get
satisfaction from the Estonians were rebuffed, the Estonians insisting that their trade
imbalance with Britain, and the need to extract commercial concessions, necessitated the
awarding of the contract to a British firm. Vickers constructed the vessels in its yard at
Barrow-in-Furness and launched them in early July 1936. To help man the submarines
the British agreed to the training in Great Britain of five Estonian officers and five petty
officers.23 The conclusion of the sale marked an obvious victory for British industry.
LATVIA
In late 1927 the Latvian government began considering the construction of two additional
submarines and a minelayer of about 4,000 tons. The Latvians took their time acting on
the matter—nearly two years. In March 1929, Joseph Addison, the British representative
in Riga, met with Captain Keyserling. The Latvian officer revealed his nation’s intention
of purchasing two submarines in Great Britain and wanted to place the orders as soon as
possible—without consulting the Latvian Parliament—and wanted to make payments
over a four- to six-year period. The Admiralty had already agreed to provide training if
the Latvians bought from British yards.24
Chantiers de la Loire and Wurms quickly demonstrated interest in the deal, which
produced immediate official fear that their resulting struggle would result in a loss for
French industry. The Naval Minister ranked high among the French officials insisting
upon cooperation among the French builders. Securing these orders would be seen as a
way of increasing France’s ‘already well-established influence with Latvian naval
officials’.25
Latvia never purchased these vessels, probably due to a lack of financial resources,
and therefore the negotiations were for naught, but Chantiers de la Loire did not miss the
chance of using its government’s fear that something might interfere with the deal to ask
the French government to advance it enough money to pay off a bank and hush up some
type of scandal in which they were involved.26
Latvia’s purchase of new submarine batteries provides a clear example of how the
powers involved in the naval arms trade in the Baltic conducted business. In January
1930, the Latvians asked the Foreign Office for the names of the firms that supplied
batteries to the Royal Navy. The diplomats passed on the information and the Latvians
asked Chloride Electrical Storage to submit a bid. Chloride, acting on the belief that the
French were pressuring Latvia to accept a French tender, asked for Foreign Office
intervention. Knatchbull-Hugessen, the British representative in Riga, then began
lobbying for Chloride’s offer. The Latvians then asked about the products of the
D.P.Battery Company, whereupon he began to speak in favor of this firm. The Chloride
agent soon told Knatchbull-Hugessen that his firm owned a controlling interest in D.P.
and would be quite pleased if the contract went to them. Moreover, it was rumored that
these two firms had cooperated in preparing their bids. Hearing no more from the Latvian
government about the wares of D.P., Knatchbull-Hugessen began once again to urge the
Latvians to accept the Chloride tender.27 Knatchbull-Hugessen painted a clear picture of
the deceit and corruption that continually plagued the contest for naval contracts in
Latvia:
There has been an immense amount of intrigue and duplicity over the
whole affair. The French and Swedish competition is very hot… The
Latvian authorities have been oily in the extreme and outwardly all in
favour of the British firm. But I heard two days ago that they intended to
give it to the French… There has been much corruption and (I write in
strict confidence) the agent of Chloride has been so active in this respect
during the last few days that I hesitate to go any further in his support. But
in point of fact I think we have done all we can already … I believe the
request for information about D.P. was really a move on the part of those
authorities here who want to give the order to the French. In order to put
Chloride out of court they asked for details about D.P. whose tender is
much lower. On receiving these details they said that the difference in
price was so slight that the French batteries were preferable. In any case I
don’t think D.P. ever had much of a chance.28
Knatchbull-Hugessen proved correct about D.P.’s chances. British Tudor managed to

somehow corral the deal and their batteries filled the compartments of the Latvian
submarines. Tudor got the contract in spite of an abundance of French pressure and the
efforts of the new French naval attaché, Commandant Still. The batteries sold for about
1,000,000 francs and Tripier, the French Minister to Latvia, speculated that Tudor’s
success was partially due to a reduction of its price by 500,000 francs. Primarily though,
he attributed Britain’s success to the Latvian belief that in the event of war Great Britain
could more easily supply Latvia with arms and munitions.29
France’s investment in Keyserling did not deliver the battery order, or one for
additional submarines. And the Latvian officer’s apparent collusion with the French
brought him no immediate ill effect. On 18 November 1927, on the ninth anniversary of
Latvia’s independence, Keyserling was promoted to Rear-Admiral. Five years later,
Keyserling was forced to resign, an event that some British observers considered just and
that others clearly regarded as a boon for the future of British naval sales to Latvia. Their
hopes did not bear fruit, however, as the Latvian Navy remained ‘clearly Francophile’
under the leadership of Captain Theodor Spade, Keyserling’s replacement.30
Before his resignation, Keyserling had involved himself in several incidents that had
helped discredit him in the eyes of his superiors. The immediate cause of his dismissal
was that during a return trip of the fleet from Estonia, members of the Social Democratic
Party serving in the navy observed the transfer of large quantities of liquor from another
vessel to Virsaitis, the Latvian flagship. Exactly what the Admiral intended to do with the
smuggled goods remains unclear, but it is possible that he had a problem with alcohol; its
mention often appears in the documents in connection with the Admiral. For example,
during one visit of the Latvian fleet to Estonia, Keyserling immobilized himself by
getting drunk and falling down a stairwell on his own gunboat.31
A customs officer visited the ship and confirmed the smuggling allegation. On 17
September 1931, the Minister of War reported that there existed irregularities in the
Latvian Navy and recommended a change in the high command. The President consented
and Keyserling was ordered to tender his resignation. Keyserling agreed to go without a
fight and the government withdrew an order that it had issued for his compulsory
retirement.32
Politics played a role in the matter. After the Admiral’s impropriety came to light, the
Democratic Center Party approached the Minister of War and demanded Keyserling’s
immediate dismissal. Reportedly, the Minister informed them that a decision had already
been reached on the issue. Because Keyserling was a German Balt, the leaders of the
Baltic-German faction attempted to intervene, albeit unsuccessfully, on his behalf. The
Admiral insisted that his demise was the result of a plot hatched by the Social Democrats
and that the campaign against him had begun during the temporary absence of President
Alberts Kviesis. During this time, Dr Paul Kalnins, the head of the Saeima, and a member
of the Social Democratic Party, served as President. The Social Democrats had been
demanding the Admiral’s resignation for some time and Keyserling considered this an
election stunt engineered in order to get the anti-German vote.33
The British military attaché believed that the root reason for Keyserling being forced
out was indeed the fact that he was a Baltic German. A French observer believed the
same. The British attaché doubted that an ethnic Latvian officer would have been forced
to retire if the same irregularities had occurred under his tenure. Local gossips maintained
that the Latvian military authorities wanted to replace Keyserling and were only waiting
until they had a Lettish officer sufficiently trained to take over. The government now
possessed such an officer, Captain Spade, and supposedly used the smuggling incident as
an excuse to remove Keyserling. The attaché, though, did agree with the statements made
by the Minister of War regarding past improper behavior by Keyserling. Keyserling
‘strenuously’ supporting a recent French bid for submarine batteries had brought the
Admiral into direct conflict with the Director of the Armament Department and the Chief
of Staff. The attaché closed his discussion of this part of the scandal by commenting that
‘it is more than probable that he would have remained at the post had his origin not been
German-Baltic’. Others believed that the feelings that helped produce the downfall of
Admiral Keyserling might not have erupted but for the impending national elections. On
Keyserling’s departure one British official noted: ‘As usual, the right thing seems to have
been done for the wrong reason.’34
LITHUANIA
In 1927, in order to provide a vessel for its Coast Watch capable of venturing into the
Baltic, Lithuania purchased its only warship, the former German minesweeper M.59. The
Lithuanians christened the new vessel Prezydentas Smetona, after Lithuania’s dictator.
The government wanted the ship primarily for the suppression of smuggling, but it also
served as the presidential yacht. In addition, Lithuania possessed one ice-breaking
tugboat, Perkunas.35
A November 1927 exploit of Lithuania’s new ship produced amusement among the
inhabitants of the Klaipeda region and embarrassment among other Lithuanians. A
British diplomatic report on the incident tells the story well:
After weeks of overhauling, the ‘fleet’, consisting of the ‘President

Smetona’, a former German minesweeper, put out to sea on Friday last in
search of a gang of spiritus [sic] runners who were known to be
contemplating a landing of contraband on the coast. The smugglers were
eventually sighted off the Lithuanian-Latvian coast and captured. The
captured vessel was a fast motor boat called the ‘Hassan Bir’, manned by
a crew of seven men and carrying a cargo of thirty thousand litres of
spiritus [sic].
A prize crew of seven men was then placed on board the ‘Hassan Bir’
which was then taken in tow for Memel with apparently disabled motors.
But unfortunately it had by now got dark, there was a high sea running
and soon the cable broke, with the result that the vessels lost sight of each
other. In the meantime the smugglers, after generously entertaining their
captors, made them prisoners and re-starting their perfectly good motors,
made off into the darkness.
The ‘President Smetona’ continued the search all night and the whole
of the next morning, but finally had to return empty-handed to port, only
to learn that instead of foundering as everyone at first believed, the
smuggler had landed near Danzig, where it is now understood the prize
crew are detained by the Polish Authorities.36
Perhaps Admiral Keyserling had trained the sailors of the Lithuanian Navy.
Lithuania officially founded its navy in 1935 and it served under army command. Its
uniforms and system of ranks were modeled after those of the US Navy and, in 1939, its
personnel numbered seven officers, 12 petty officers, and about 60 men. Its first and only
ship was Prezydentas Smetona.37
The 1930s also saw the Lithuanian government approach Great Britain for advice on
coastal defense. In September 1934, Captain G.C.Muirhead-Gould, the British naval
attaché in Berlin, met with the Lithuanian Minister of War, General Sniuktas, in Kovno,
at the invitation of the latter. The Lithuanian Minister wanted to discuss coastal defense
matters, especially the cost and defensive value of various types of weapons useful to
Lithuania. In January 1935, after consulting the War Office, the Air Ministry, and the
Department of Overseas Trade, as well as some other branches of the British government,
Muirhead-Gould sent the estimates to General Sniuktas. The British insisted upon
Lithuanian assurances that the information would be treated as confidential and that it
would not be used in any commercial negotiations with another foreign power or
commercial concern. Additionally, Muirhead-Gould was told to give no advice on the
relative defensive values of the weapons in question.38
On 1 July, Muirhead-Gould met with the Lithuanian Minister of War to discuss
Lithuania’s coastal defenses. Muirhead-Gould, in direct contradiction to his instructions,
advised the Lithuanians on what equipment they should purchase to defend their
coastline. The British officer did not believe that he had exceeded his orders and wrote to
his superiors: ‘mindful of the instructions… I avoided any direct recommendations. But I
had said last September, and I saw no harm in repeating, that I considered that one
submarine was practically useless and that two submarines were not much better.’39
Muirhead-Gould pointed out that aircraft could be provided much more quickly than
artillery and that Lithuania already had the necessary pilots. Additionally, the planes
could be used against a variety of targets: enemy ships and boats landing troops, as well
as soldiers in the field. Aircraft also offered a price advantage over submarines. One
submarine cost £200,000, the cost of a dozen aircraft. Muirhead-Gould reported that the
Lithuanians seemed pleased and impressed by his analysis of the situation. The
Lithuanians decided to study the matter.40 Nothing came of the talks.
Muirhead-Gould’s freedom with military advice was an unusual act in the region,
though the strictures placed upon such things by his superiors were not. The British, as
well as the French, generally disliked providing any military advice without the hope of
reaping commercial or political benefit. Moreover, Britain feared the potential diplomatic
entanglements that might result.
POLAND
In 1926, a dramatic change occurred in Polish politics with Marshal Piłsudski’s seizure of
power, a change that did not bode well for the navy. Initially, the Marshal expressed no
interest in naval matters and worked on the principle that since such decisions had been
made before his assumption of power, and therefore made badly, they did not merit
pursuit. For the navy, the question of funding became an uncertain one. The doubts of the
Polish high command regarding the usefulness to Poland of a navy in a time of war, as
well as the question of the force’s ability to guard its own base in wartime, also raised
questions. Together, these issues prevented new construction.41
The worsening world economic situation worried the French, who became fearful that
the submarine deals might collapse. Chantiers Navals Français, in their typically paranoid
fashion, fretted about the Italians or Electric Boat slipping in and stealing from them the
orders for the destroyers. They insisted that the intervention of the French Finance
Minister would quickly seal the matter, ensuring French influence, and that the next
orders went to France. Moreover, Augustin-Normand was not pleased when in February
they found out that the submarine order had been cut from nine boats to three because of
the falling value of Poland’s currency. This motivated them to ask the French government
to guarantee the financing of the submarines as they had the building of Gdynia.42
The Foreign Minister was not immediately opposed to the measure, believing it was in
France’s interest to cooperate in the development of Poland’s navy. Also, getting the
order would help alleviate the crisis French shipbuilders had endured since the end of the
war because of the scarcity of orders. A discussion of Normand’s request ensued, and as
the matter dragged on, the French Navy also became anxious to resolve the situation.
They believed that France building the submarines was critical to maintaining French
influence in Poland and would result in additional orders for French firms. This would
also deny the business to foreign competitors, particularly the Italians, who were pressing
hard on the Poles.43 In the end, the Foreign Minister acknowledged that France had
significant military and political interest in obtaining the submarine order, but that the
then poor state of public finances meant that the government could not give Normand the
guarantee they wanted. The matter proved not as simple to resolve as the businessmen
thought, but fortunately for Normand, if not for Poland, the Polish Parliament voted
sufficient credits in April 1926.44
The coup and the financial difficulties only temporarily stopped the Polish Navy’s
efforts to obtain funding for new warships. In 1929, they requested 60,000,000 złotys for
new submarines. Piłsudski would only authorize 33,000,000, again hurting chances for
growth.45 But half was certainly better than nothing.
Despite his initial unwillingness to allocate the funds the Polish Navy wanted,
Marshall Piłsudski did authorize the creation of plans for a new naval program. The new
plan, drawn-up by three generals, differed little from that of the ‘small program’ of 1925
and met with even less success. Parliamentary resistance and the lack of money in the
government’s coffers, prevented the voting of sufficient credits for new construction. A
French official wrote that throughout the 1920s and early 1930s the feelings of the Polish
Navy drifted regularly from hope to despair, and compared the force’s situation to that of
the four seasons. In the summer, the various departments received orders to prepare their
budget provisions for the next year; this was the good season. They prepared a budget
and the navy was hopeful. But, the autumn came quickly, and Marshal Piłsudski or the
Sejm intervened, cutting the credits. The winter arrived and the navy passed it in the
‘doldrums’. Spring soon returned and with it a revival of the navy’s hopes for expansion,
and with this, the appearance of the suppliers and salesmen.46
For several years the navy had to remain content with the purchases it had made in
1925–26. The three submarines and two destroyers ordered from French yards in the mid-
1920s arrived in Poland over the next few years. The French builders took an inordinate
amount of time completing the vessels, and all arrived much later than had been planned.
The first of the destroyers, Wicher (Hurricane), arrived 20 months late. Its sister ship,
Burza (Squall), did not see completion until 1932, 32 months late. Numerous
construction defects and the bankruptcy of the builder, Chantiers Navals Français,
account for much of the delay. The three submarines, Rys (Lynx), Wilk (Wolf), and Zbik
(Wildcat), were also much delayed. Mechanical difficulties plagued the destroyers and
the submarines and the poor performance of the ships did not set well with Polish
officials. This contributed to a lack of confidence in French construction and a reluctance
to purchase additional French vessels when the money finally became available.47
In 1932, the Polish Navy tried again to get funding for new construction. They wanted
14,231,000 złotys, including 9,000,000 złotys for foreign orders. Poland envisaged
purchasing three 1,200-ton, 36-knot destroyers, and five 700-ton, 17-knot minelaying
submarines. The remaining 5,000,000 złotys would finance the construction of
minelayers by Polish government yards in Modlin and Gdynia.48
The French Navy greeted the news with much enthusiasm, and the reason they were
interested provides another insight into the strategic thinking of the French Navy in the
interwar period. They wanted the Polish Navy to expand because this meant the growth
of an allied naval force that ran little chance of having its fleet reduced by any naval
limitations treaties, something that the heads of any large navy could expect in this era.
Moreover, if France failed to get the order, another state would, and thus deprive France
of the business. The contracts would also help address France’s unemployment problem.
Indeed, the matter was seen as one that interested the ‘national defense, foreign policy,
and economic activity of France’.49 Clearly, foreign arms sales were an element of French
interwar policy that helped meet its military, political, and economic objectives.
Nothing came of the more ambitious elements of the Polish Navy’s plan, but the
improvement of Poland’s economic situation in 1933 resulted in the authorization of a
segment of the navy’s program. The Polish Navy received the funds to order four
minesweepers from Polish yards, one from a builder in Modlin, the other three from firms
in Gdynia.50
This same period also saw the Poles embark upon technical studies for the
construction of a large minelayer that they hoped to order before 1 April 1933. Despite
Polish dissatisfaction with earlier warships purchased from France, the order for the
minelayer went to the French builder, Chantiers Navals Français, but only after some
ruthless negotiating on the part of the Poles. The Poles were ‘tough bargainers’, and
negotiating a business agreement with them was never for the faint-hearted.51
The Poles demanded economic compensation from France in return for placing the
order with a French firm. At one point, Admiral Swirski threatened to withdraw from all
Polish obligations to Chantiers Navals Français if the French government did not provide
a satisfactory response by 15 April 1933. Moreover, he pressured Paris by insisting that
he had already embarked upon preliminary discussions with Scandinavian builders,
commenting that if the French did not act by the 15 April deadline, he would have no
choice but to commit Poland to an unnamed Scandinavian firm.52 This might have been a
bluff on Swirksi’s part to extort more concessions from France, but it was one he
successfully executed, though the Poles certainly needed the concessions from France as
badly as the French wanted the order for their yards.
France’s economic difficulties gave the Poles a strong negotiating position. They also
benefited from the timing of their decision. It came during a period in which the French
had been pressuring the Polish government to order a new submarine as a means of
supporting the strapped French shipbuilding industry. Swirski did not follow through on
his threat to break off the talks on 15 April. They dragged on, endlessly, from January to
the end of April, nearly collapsing on more than one occasion. France and Poland finally
concluded an accord on 28 April 1933. In return for placing the order for the minelayer in
France, the Poles received import credits of around 17,000,000 francs, or approximately
one-half of the cost of the minelayer.53
The arrangement did not last long. In November 1933, the Poles cancelled the deal
with Chantiers Navals Français and announced that they would have another French firm
build the minelayer. This shocked the French. Why the Poles made this decision is
unclear, but in February 1934 they conferred the order on Augustin-Normand. The price
was 33,000,000 francs and in return for getting the order Augustin-Normand agreed to
order a number of the components from Polish firms.54 This willingness to do business in
Poland undoubtedly contributed to the Polish government’s sudden change of mind.
The French yards continued their tradition of inefficiency, however, and did not
deliver the vessel until 1938. Moreover, the ship, Gryf, proved a poorly designed one, as
the Poles had tried to build it for use as a training vessel, a state yacht, and a minelayer.
The deal received much criticism in Poland, not only because of the poor quality of the
ship, but also because of its cost, which approached that of a small destroyer.55
THE FRENCH NAVAL MISSION TO POLAND AND FRANCE’S

NAVAL STRATEGY
The purchase of Gryf marked the end of the first period of Poland’s association with
French naval builders. But long before the conclusion of the deal cracks had begun to
appear in the political relationship between Poland and France. On 1 May 1932, the
Polish government, in accordance with the terms of their agreement, gave the required
three months’ notice regarding the termination of the French naval mission to Poland.
Despite their number having been reduced considerably the previous year, the ending of
the mission came as a surprise not only to its personnel, but also to the Polish officers
working with them. The brusque manner in which the Poles ended a relationship dating
to 1923 offended the members of the mission, as well as the French Embassy, and harsh
words were exchanged. The ending of the naval mission coincided with the expiration of
the contract for the French military mission to Poland. The Poles gave measures of
economy as the reason for cancellation, and some in the Polish government believed that
the mission had become unnecessary. Also driving the Polish action was the French
government’s refusal to supply the second installment of a loan that would have allowed
the completion of Poland’s Upper Silesia-Gdynia railway. Economic and political
disagreements between the two states also strained the relationship. Important among
these was French approval of a change in the military status of Germany. Some British
observers speculated correctly that the decision to terminate the mission came directly
from Marshal Piłsudski.56
The Naval Mission had exerted a great amount of influence during its tenure,
especially when directed by Admiral Jolivet, who had died, unexpectedly, on 17 June
1926. French officials believed it provided a ‘beneficial influence’ and served as a ‘tool
for securing contracts for French industry’, but Laroche, France’s Ambassador to Poland,
thought that it could be reduced. To him, Jolivet’s untimely passing presented an
opportunity to re-evaluate the benefit to France of encouraging the ‘exaggerated
ambitions of the Polish Navy’.57
This evoked an immediate cry from the French Navy. The Naval Minister soundly
opposed any shrinking of the mission and disagreed heartily with Laroche’s stance. He
argued for a more equitable division of Poland’s military budget between the land and sea
services, and went on to remind them of the military agreements between the two states.
The alliance of 1921, and a subsequent accord of November 1924, foresaw cooperation
between the French and Polish Navies. The caveats for this cooperation were the
completion of the port at Gdynia and the fulfillment of Poland’s naval program. These
factors were not independent of the development of the ground forces, because troops
were certainly needed to protect Gdynia, as were destroyers, submarines, and

minesweepers. Ships were necessary to keep the port open, and the French Navy did not
have sufficient forces to do this. Therefore, the Minister insisted, the French Navy needed
the Polish fleet in order to carry out its assigned task in the government’s strategy. The
efforts that the Poles made to develop their navy ‘cannot be qualified as exaggerated’.
Therefore, he argued, it would be better to ‘encourage’ rather than moderate Polish naval
building efforts. Moreover, the personnel of the mission played an indispensable
instructional role guiding the organization and training of the Polish Navy.58
French Admiralty opinion seems to have won out, though the records are incomplete.
The French sent Capitaine de vaisseau Richard as Jolivet’s successor in November 1926,
but were careful to appoint someone of less than Flag rank so as not to disconcert
Swirski, the head of the Polish Navy, and Marshal Piłsudski, who, it was said, disliked
being advised by someone of high rank. Capitaine de frégate Raymond Cellier succeeded
Richard in December 1929.59
A year later, the Naval Mission was made autonomous. The French Ambassador
seems to have extracted some kind of promise from Piłsudski regarding the continuance
of the Naval Mission. As always, the French feared British encroachment and worried
that Britain might try to substitute themselves for the French in Poland, something that
would injure French influence, and that Paris viewed as even more likely after the
mission’s departure.60
In July 1931, the Poles made their first moves toward killing the mission, deciding at
the end of the year on its phased reduction. By January 1932, Piłsudski had decided to
eliminate the military mission. His reason for doing so foreshadows a great shift in Polish
diplomacy and reveals the reasoning behind much of what Poland did in foreign policy
and military matters for the rest of the 1930s. Piłsudski, in the later part of 1931,
redirected Poland’s foreign relations and began putting more pressure on Lithuania and
Czechoslovakia, presumably to resolve their diplomatic and territorial disputes with
Warsaw. He also moved to become more independent of the League of Nations and
Poland’s ally France. In regard to the French military mission, the Poles had simply
decided that they had ‘grown up’ and no longer had any use for an entity that in the eyes
of foreigners made it appear as if the ‘Polish Army is under the tutelage of France’. To
the Poles, getting rid of the French team was a matter of ‘dignity’.61
Paris believed that the military mission’s dissolution ‘enfeebled’ French influence, but
saw no way around the matter other than supporting the appointment of a general as
military attaché. On the heels of this came Piłsudski’s decision to kill the naval mission
as well, the Marshall arguing, correctly in the mind of some French observers, that not
only could Poland not afford the mission, but that it needed to concentrate on developing
its army.62
Following the departure of the French missions, Franco-Polish relations suffered
another serious blow. In September 1932, Germany withdrew from the Geneva
disarmament conference after the refusal of its demand for equality in armaments. By
December 1933 the resolve of the European powers, including France, had melted away,
resulting in the granting to the Nazi regime a privilege continually refused to the Weimar
Republic. Poland deeply resented the sudden volte-face in French policy and Poland’s
more independent diplomacy included a warming in relations with Germany. This
culminated in the signing of a German-Polish treaty of non-aggression in January 1934.63
CONCLUSIONS
British influence in Estonia remained secure, even though it netted Britain little economic
gain. French influence in Latvia also remained firm, despite the removal of France’s
greatest ally in the battle for naval contracts, Admiral Keyserling. His successor, Admiral
Salza, would maintain the Latvian Navy’s close ties with France, though there is no
evidence that he also continued Keyserling’s tradition of corruption.
The break in Franco-Polish naval relations undermined possible future French naval
sales to Poland. The ineptness of French firms and the increasingly strained economic
and political relationship between Poland and France cost the French their best customer
in the region. The breakdown in relations between the two states is not surprising when
one considers France’s poor treatment of its allies in general,64 and Poland in particular.
The French looked at Poland, as well as at the other states of the cordon, and Eastern and
Central Europe as ‘cash cows’ and a way of supplementing their own military strength,
while, most importantly, turning a profit; 1931–32 saw accusations from Poland’s public
that France was financially exploiting the Poles.65 This was bad policy. To be
magnanimous in their treatment of their allies in regard to arming them would have been
costly to France, in a financial sense. But it was more costly—politically, diplomatically,
and in the end also economically—to exploit them while simultaneously counting on
their military support. After the cancellation of the French naval mission, the Poles
followed an independent course in their foreign policy, as well as in regard to their naval
armaments. They abandoned French builders, but only for a short time.
NOTES
1. Bond, British Military Policy, pp. 76–80; Hall, ‘British Air Defense and Anglo-French
Relations’, pp. 280–1.
2. Gordon, ‘Admiralty and Imperial Overstretch’, p. 67; Hood, Royal Republicans, pp. 96–7.
3. Hovi, ‘Security before Disarmament’, p. 121.
4. Hughes, Maginot Line, pp. 192–5; Doughty, ‘The French Armed Forces’, pp. 53, 59.
5. Young, ‘La Guerre’, pp. 46–7.
7. Walker to Collier, 12 Mar. [1930], and Salza to Walker, 12 Mar. [1930], FO 371/14784.
8. Walker to Collier, 12 Mar. [1930], FO 371/14784.
9. Collier to Walker, 10 Apr. 1930, Dawson to Collier, 10 Apr. 1930, and Collier to Knatchbull-
Hugessen, 10 July 1930, FO 371/14784.
10. Knatchbull-Hugessen to Collier, 10 July 1930, FO 371/14784; Eberhard Rössler, The U-
boat: The Evolution and Technical History of German Submarines, trans. Harold Erenberg
(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute, 1975), p. 93.
11. Knatchbull-Hugessen to Collier, 10 July 1930, FO 371/14784.
12. Cosme to Briand, 16 Mar., 31 May, and 1 Aug. 1930, and MAE to MM, 3 July and 18 Dec.
1930, AMAE, Estonie 58.
13. Andersons, ‘Die militärische Situation’, p. 141; Conway’s 1922–1939, p. 351; Anderson,
Latvia Past and Present, p. 452; Conway’s 1906–1921, p. 415; Bruère to MAE, 10 July
1933, French Minister Estonia to MAE, 11 July 1933, and s.i., French Minister Estonia to
MAE, 10 Dec. 1933, AMAE, Estonie 58. The figures vary in these documents.
14. French Minister Estonia to MAE, 11 July and 5 Aug. 1933, AMAE, Estonie 58.
15. Ricard to MAE, 11 and 17 Jan. 1934, AMAE, Estonie 58.
16. French Minister Estonia to MAE, 11 July 1933, Ricard to MAE, 11 Jan. 1934, and s.i.,
French Minister Estonia to MAE, 24 Jan. 1934, AMAE, Estonie 58.
17. S.i., French Minister Estonia to MAE, 1 Feb. and 13 Dec. 1934, and French Minister Estonia
to MAE, 7 Mar. 1934, AMAE, Estonie 58.
18. Carbier to Boncour, 3 Aug. 1933, s.i., French Minister Estonia to MAE, 14 Aug. 1933, and
Papillon to MM, 17 Nov. 1933, AMAE, Estonie 58.
19. S.i., French Minister Estonia to MAE, 14 Aug. 1933, AMAE, Estonie 58.
20. French Minister Estonia to MAE, 11 Sept. 1933, s.i., French Minister Estonie to MAE, 26
Sept. 1933, Sabsay to Schneider, 18 Oct. 1933, and Papillon to MM, 17 Nov. 1933, AMAE,
Estonie 58.
21. Papillon to MM, 17 Nov. 1933, s.i., French Minister Estonia to MAE, 18 Nov. 1933, and
MAE to MM, 18 Dec. 1933, AMAE, Estonie 58.
22. S.i., French Minister Estonia to MAE, 10 Dec. 1933, AMAE, Estonie 58.
23. Shipp, 5 Apr. 1935, file MID 2584–67, PBS, roll 10; ‘Note’, 30 Apr. 1934, Coulondre to
MAE, 13 Apr. 1934, Bruère to MAE, 4 Apr. 1934, and Merejöudud to Schneider, 14 Apr.
1934, AMAE, Estonie 58; Baltic States, Annual Report, 1936, 11 Feb. 1937, FO 371/21060.
24. Nash, ‘Report on Visit of Naval Attaché to Esthonia and Latvia, 9th-19th September, 1927’,
24 Sept. 1927, FO 371/12551; Addison to Villiers, 4 Mar. 1929, and Blacklock to Collier, 11
Jan. 1929, FO 371/13982.
25. De Castillon Saint-Victor to Briand, 21 Nov. 1928, MAE to MM, stamped 10 Feb. 1928,
and ‘Commandes navales de Lettonie’, 23 May 1929, AMAE, Lettonie 23.
26. ‘Commandes navales de Lettonie’, 23 May 1929, AMAE, Lettonie 23.
27. Swetlitschny to Director of Naval Contracts, Jan. 1930, Director of Naval Contracts to
Swetlitschny, 21 Feb. 1930, Naylor to Admiralty, 24 Oct. 1930, FO minute, Oct. 1930, and
Knatchbull-Hugessen to Collier, 19 Dec. 1930, FO 371/14778.
28. Knatchbull-Hugessen to Collier, 19 Dec. 1930, FO 371/14778.
29. Tripier to Briand, 5 Jan. 1931, AMAE, Lettonie 61.
30. Vaughan to Chamberlain, 7 Dec. 1927, FO 371/12551; Addison to Chamberlain, 5 Dec.
1928, FO 371/13271; ‘La Baltique en 1937’, SHM, 1BB7 132 Pologne.
31. MA to Knatchbull-Hugessen, 2 Oct. 1931, FO 371/15538; French Minister Estonia to
Briand, 22 Aug. 1927, MAE, Lettonie 23.
32. MA to Knatchbull-Hugessen, 2 Oct. 1931, FO 371/15538.
33. Ibid., and Knatchbull-Hugessen to Marquis of Reading, 5 Oct. 1931, FO 371/15538.
34. MA to Knatchbull-Hugessen, 2 Oct. 1931, FO 371/15538; Giraudet to Briand, 19 Sept.
1931, AMAE, Lettonie 61.
35. Meister, ‘Lituaischen Marine’, p. 768; Vaughan to Chamberlain, 18 June 1927, FO
371/12551; Andersons, ‘Die militärische Situation’, p. 147; Conway’s 1922–1946, p. 354.
36. Albert to Carr, 8 Nov. 1927, FO 371/12551.
37. Meister, ‘Litauischen Marine’, p. 769.
38. Smith to Collier, 30 July 1935, FO 371/19402.
39. Preston to Riga, 2 July 1935, and Muirhead-Gould to DNI, 8 July 1935, FO 371/19402.
40. Ibid.
41. ‘Programme Naval—Budget’, n.d., and ‘Divers non Dates, Marine Future’, SHM, 1BB7 132
Pologne; Conway’s 1922–46, pp. 347.
42. ‘Note de la M.Labouret’, 30 Dec. 1925, s.i., Chantiers Navals Français to Labouret, 7 Jan.
1926, and Fenaux to MAE, 12 Feb. 1926, AMAE, Pologne 42.
43. MAE to Ministre des Finances, stamped 20 Feb. 1926, and Leygues to MAE, 28 June 1926,
AMAE, Pologne 42.
44. MAE to Ministre des Finances, 3 July 1926, and Laroche to MAE, 4 Sept. 1926, AMAE,
Pologne 42.
45. ‘Rapport de fin de Mission de la Mission Naval Française en Pologne’, 20 July 1932, SHM,
1BB7 132 Pologne.
46. ‘Organization General de la Marine’, n.d., ‘Programme Naval—Budget’, n.d., ‘Rapport de

fin de Mission de la Mission Navale Française en Pologne’, 20 July 1932, SHM, 1BB7 132
Pologne.
47. Charpeutier[?] to Chef du 2ème Bureau, received 19 July 1930, SHM, 1BB7 132 Pologne;
Conway’s 1922–46, pp. 347, 349–50.
48. BIM no. 8, 9 Dec. 1932, SHM, 1BB7 132 Pologne.
49. S.i., MM to Ministre de l’Interieur, stamped 7 Nov. 1931, AMAE, Pologne 315; ‘Note pour
le Ministre’, 3 Dec. 1931, ibid.
50. ‘Rapport de fin de Mission de la Mission Naval Français en Pologne’, 20 July 1932, SHM,
1BB7 132 Pologne; Conway’s 1922–46, pp. 347, 351.
51. Attaché Naval report, 9 Nov. 1932, SHM, 1BB7 132 Pologne; Conway’s 1922–46, p. 347;
David E.Kaiser, Economic Diplomacy and the Origins of the Second World War: Germany,
Britain, France, and Eastern Europe, 1930–1939 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1980), p. 94.
52. Papillon to MM, 10 Apr. 1933, SHM, 1BB7 132 Pologne.
53. Wandycz, Twilight, p. 345; Papillon to MM, 16 May 1933, SHM, 1BB7 132 Pologne.
54. Bargeton to French Ambassador Warsaw, 29 Nov. 1933, Laroche to MAE, 27 Nov. 1933
and 22 Feb. 1934, and Laroche to Barthou, 5 May [1934], AMAE, Pologne 315.
55. Papillon to MM, 16 May 1933, 1BB7 132 Pologne; Conway’s 1922–46, pp. 347, 351.
56. ‘Rapport de fin de Mission de la Mission Navale Française en Pologne’, 20 July 1932, 1BB7
132 Pologne; Erskine to Simon, 27 May 1932, and Vereker to Seymour, 5 July 1932, FO
371/16314; Wandycz, Twilight, pp. 229–38, especially pp. 233–4.
57. Laroche to MAE, 21 June 1926, and MAE to MM, 29 June 1926, AMAE, Pologne 45.
58. S.i., MM to MAE, 16 July 1926, AMAE, Pologne 45.
59. Leygues to MAE, 18 Nov. 1926, s.i., French charge Poland to MAE, 16 July 1926, and
Laroche to MAE, 27 Dec. 1929, AMAE, Pologne 45.
60. French Ambassador Poland to MAE, 26 Nov. 1927, AMAE, Pologne 43.
61. Bressey to MAE, 29 July 1931, Maginot to MAE, 11 Sept. 1931, and Laroche to MAE, 13
Jan. 1931, AMAE, Pologne 318; Ahmann, ‘Soviet and German Approaches’, p. 210.
62. MAE to Laroche, stamped 10 Feb. 1932, and Laroche to MAE, 30 Apr. and 18 July 1932,
AMAE, Pologne 318.
63. Josef Korbel, Poland Between East and West: Soviet and German Diplomacy Toward
Poland, 1919–1933 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963), pp. 277–86.
64. Michael Geyer, ‘The Crisis of Military Leadership in the 1930s’, Journal of Strategic
Studies (Dec. 1991), p. 460.
65. Ahmann, ‘Soviet and German Approaches’, pp. 205–6.
7
The German Projects: Finnish Naval
Development and Anglo-French Failure,
1926–34
Between the wars France feared German rearmament and struggled to enforce the
Versailles Treaty as a means of preventing this. The British thought the French worried
too much. For example, in 1929, Harold Nicolson dismissed France’s fears.1 But France
was right to be afraid. And the British should have been more concerned about the
dangers posed by German rearmament—particularly when such measures had involved
submarines. Germany’s military and civilian leaders had never accepted the restraints of
Versailles and it is well known that the German Army trained clandestinely with the
Soviet Union after Rapallo. But the German Navy worked just as diligently to prepare for
the next war, systematically violating Versailles to do so. Several countries helped Berlin,
including a few that had signed the Versailles Treaty: Japan, Italy, Spain, and Turkey.
Arguably, the one that helped the most was Finland, a country the British believed they
had ‘all wrapped up’. But even with German help, the Finns still needed a naval program
to build their fleet, because a naval program meant funding.
FINLAND’S NAVAL BILL
As foreign salesmen dreamed of brokering new deals in Finland, the passage of a naval
bill that would make such sales possible proved elusive. In May 1923, General Enckell
presented his amended report to the government, but delays and the President’s January
1924 dissolution of Parliament meant no bill was passed. After the elections, the naval
program once again arrived on the Eduskunta floor. It was killed by a procurement
scandal in the military and by the Agrarian Party’s refusal to support any additional
defense funding until the military cleansed itself of ‘undesirable elements’. By this they
meant the ethnically Swedish and former Tsarist officers who dominated the upper ranks
of Finnish defense.2
In March 1925, after the government received Kirke’s report, yet another new naval
law came before the Eduskunta. It put forth a program that included two gunboats, four
submarines—one of a very small type—at least four MTBs, and a school ship. The cost,
which included the purchase of mines, torpedoes, and other necessary equipment, was
estimated at 375,000,000 Finnish marks.3
The bill’s ‘gunboats’ are more accurately described as coastal defense ships, and were
similar to those that Kirke’s mission had suggested. The Finns planned a native version
of the vessels built by its Scandinavian neighbors Sweden and Denmark. They also
intended to construct them in Finland, purchasing the required guns, armor, and
machinery abroad. Eventually, the Finns chose to arm the ships with four 8-inch guns
paired in fore and aft turrets.4
The small submarine was intended for use on Lake Ladoga. In 1920, Finland had
made peace with the Soviets by signing the Treaty of Dorpat, which had a clause
prohibiting the use of any warship of over 100 tons on Lake Ladoga. To get around this,
the Finns intended to build a 99 ton submarine. Egerton, the British naval attaché, called
it ‘a sheer waste of money’ and pointed out that a small submarine has little endurance
and could certainly have no gun armament. Guns would be critical on Lake Ladoga
because most of the targets that the Finns might encounter would be small vessels almost
impossible to hit with a torpedo.5
Egerton also gave an astute evaluation of Finland’s strategic problems in regard to
naval matters. He realized that sea communication was a truly vital question for Finland
in the event of war. Virtually all of the nation’s war material, fuel oil, and other machine
oils had to come from overseas. In his analysis he pointed out what he perceived as a
major weakness in the Finnish naval program: it was only concerned with local defense
and none of the proposed vessels was suitable for commerce protection. He wrote that
‘the authorities appear to be reconciled to the fact that on the outbreak of war, the
Command of the Sea would pass into the hands of any enemy, who, besides possessing
some small measure of sea sense, also has sea-going surface ships suitable for carrying
out a blockade’.6 The destroyers that Finland failed to acquire from Britain in the early
1920s would have filled this gap.
In November 1925 the new naval bill finally came before the Parliament, where it was
immediately sent to the Great Committee. The government of Prime Minister Professor
Tulenheimo seemed determined that it should pass. Previously, the Minister of Defense
had insisted that he could not remain in his Cabinet post unless the Parliament accepted
the measure in its entirety. The Prime Minister evaded questions as to whether or not his
government considered the ballot on the naval program a vote of confidence in his
government, but it was generally believed that the government would resign if the
Parliament insisted on a reduction of the naval forces foreseen in the bill.7 Its intentions
would be tested.
In committee, the naval bill suffered the fate that befell all of its predecessors:
reduction. The committee cut the bill’s funding from 315,000,000 to 215,000,000 marks,
the money to be spent over four years instead of five. Afterward, a Socialist
representative motioned for the rejection of the entire program. It passed by a
considerable majority.8
Observers expected the government to resign after the bill failed in committee. The
President of Finland intervened and summoned the representatives of the various political
parties to discuss the problem. The President had been a member of the Agrarian Party
before his election, an affiliation that he must have used to exert some influence over this
group. When the Parliament met and the government once again repeated its proposal,
the Agrarian Party offered a compromise. They asked that the Parliament attach the
following rider to the measure arguing for the reduced figure of 215,000,000 marks:
‘Moreover, not more than one-quarter of the total sum shall be expended in any one year,
beyond any surplus left over from the previous exercise, unless a greater sum be voted in
the budget of any of the years in question.’9
The german projects 113
The amendment produced a strange constitutional situation: it would allow the

government to ask for the additional 100,000,000 marks it originally wanted when
presenting the budgets for the next three years. It also produced a circumstance
advantageous to the government. The Finnish constitution had a provision that allowed
the seated government to delay the entry into force of any law, even ones that had been
approved by the Parliament, until after the next general election. To do this, the
government had to have the support of one-third of the members of the Eduskunta.
Therefore, if the parties on the left who had led the opposition to the bill decided to make
use of this provision to delay the passage of the naval program, because of the rider there
would be nothing to prevent the government from asking the Parliament to approve the
expenditure of up to 100,000,000 marks during the 1926 fiscal year. That would leave the
next Parliament with the task of passing the law providing for the expenditure of the
215,000,000 marks. This strange proposal passed by a 108 to 85 vote, with the Socialist
and Communist deputies forming the majority of the opposition.10
This compromise still did not ensure the program’s approval. The continuing debate,
as well as the political problems caused by disputes with the Jäger faction in the military
and government, combined to bring down the government in late 1925.11 After five years,
Finland still did not have a naval program.
The Finns finally passed a naval bill on 30 September 1927, after nearly seven years
of debate, recrimination, and ministerial instability that made interwar French
government look rock solid by comparison. The passage of the measure was due largely
to a tragedy that struck the Finnish Navy. In 1925, the torpedo boat S-2 sank in a storm
with the loss of 55 men. Elements sympathetic to the passage of a naval law used the
disaster to found an effective naval league to lobby for naval spending. The bill, little
changed from Enckell’s last proposal, called for the expenditure of 308,000,000 marks
over six years for the construction of two armored coastal ships of 3,900 tons, three
submarines of 493/716 tons, one submarine of 99 tons (which eventually displaced
114/142 tons), and four 12 ton MTBs.12 Intense competition for the contracts soon began.
THE FINNISH SUBMARINE PURCHASES
Though Finland did not pass its first formal naval bill until 1927, the Parliament did
approve some funding for warships. In 1925 the Eduskunta voted credits for the
construction of one small and three large submarines and two torpedo boats. The
following year, Finland signed its first submarine construction contract. The shadowy
arrangements surrounding this deal were similar to those suggested in the early 1920s by
the French businessman de Sairigné of Chantiers de la Gironde. To conform to the
demands of public pressure, the contract went to a native yard, the A.B.Crichton-Vulcan
works in Turku. The price was 28,000,000 marks. The vessel was to be built under the
supervision of a Dutch firm, N.V.Ingenieurskantoor voor Scheepsbouw den Hague (IvS).
The Dutch contracted to supply the engines and all other machinery, the armaments, and
fittings. Only the hull of the vessel would actually be built in Finland. The larger
submarines would be based upon the German type UC III used during the First World
War.13
The deal caused a stir among the British and French diplomats because of the unusual
circumstances under which it occurred. Chief among the causes of their discontent was
the presence in Finland of a number of German naval experts. The Finnish military
employed a number of Germans after the end of the world war, a policy they continued
into the 1930s. In 1927, the British identified 21 Germans, some of whom had become
Finnish citizens, in the employ of the Finnish military. The most important of these, for
the Finnish Navy, was Korvettenkapitän Karl Bartenbach.14
Bartenbach, the commander of the Flanders U-boat flotilla during the First World
War, arrived in Finland in May 1924. The French military attaché, de Coppet, discovered
his employment by accident after the Finns had exerted an enormous amount of effort to
keep his retention secret. De Coppet, fearing, properly, that a German’s presence at the
Ministry of Defense would hinder French efforts to obtain the submarine contracts,
broached the existence of Bartenbach with Finnish Minister of Defense, Hjelman, as well
as E.N.Setälä, the Foreign Minister. De Coppet warned the Finns that the provisions of
the Versailles Treaty made it impossible for a German firm to build submarines. Hjelman
admitted that Finland had employed the German expert and assured de Coppet that the
presence of a German advisor would not influence the awarding of the contracts. Setälä
insisted that Finland’s decision would be an impartial one.15
Nothing could have been further from the truth. Military or naval missions exercised
only limited effect on the awarding of naval armaments contracts in the Baltic, and in the
case of General Kirke’s mission to Finland, none. But having someone play the role of
naval advisor, which Bartenbach did in Finland, and Jolivet and Vennin did in a de facto
manner in Poland and Latvia respectively, proved key. Bartenbach’s presence mattered
and through him Finland became one of the means by which the German Navy prepared
for its next war.
The German Navy began cheating on the Treaty of Versailles in June 1919, one month
after the agreement’s ratification. A German naval officer, Ulrich Blum, proposed to
Krupp managers the founding of a submarine construction office at the Krupp Germania
Werft (or Deutsche Werft) shipyard in Kiel. The object was to market German submarine
plans and knowledge to other nations. Krupp agreed, and Blum, along with Karl
Bartenbach and a number of other former German naval officers, began trying to interest
other nations in their wares.16
Bartenbach began his postwar career working out of Costa Rica in 1920, probably
conducting negotiations with Japan from there, or with Argentina, where he moved in
1921. The next year, Bartenbach was involved in the German Navy’s negotiations that
led to the founding of the Dutch puppet company Ingenieurskantoor voor Scheepsbouw
(IvS). The German Navy, in conjunction with Krupp and a number of other German
firms, launched IvS as a design office in order to stay on the cutting-edge of submarine
development. It was established in Kiel, and moved to Holland in 1925. The German
Navy provided its financial backing, fronting 1,000,000 Reichsmarks and promising an
additional 120,000 per year if needed. The money came from a secret slush fund the navy
had created at the end of the war, partially from illegal scrapping sales. Additional
financial support for navy ‘black projects’ came from Weimar officials, who colluded to
‘vastly overcharge’ for navy equipment, and then divert the profits to what they
considered more worthy causes.17
Bartenbach came to Finland as naval advisor in May 1924. He received his

appointment through the auspices of Commodore von Schoultz. Before the Commodore’s
retirement, he had written to Tirpitz and asked the former German Admiral to
recommend someone suitable for assisting the Finnish Navy, especially with its
submarines. Schoultz did this because since the Treaty of Versailles prohibited Germany
from constructing submarines, there would be many unemployed experts who would
have no reason for withholding all up-to-date information and advice. Schoultz did not
believe that other powers would have such an inclination toward frankness.18
The Finnish Navy got permission to embark upon its first naval construction project in
the summer of 1925. They planned four submarines and opened the bidding the next year.
The presence of Bartenbach did not prevent foreign firms from pursuing the orders.
Augustin-Normand and Chantiers de la Loire formed a consortium and asked the French
Foreign Ministry to intervene with the Finns on their behalf. The French liked their firms
to work together and urged the French legation in Helsinki to support the duo, as long as
their efforts did not prejudice the Finns against other French builders.19
Augustin-Normand recorded a happy result from the French diplomatic intervention
and believed that they only had one real competitor for the deal, the Swedish firm
Kockums Mekaniska Verkstad. In a certain respect they were correct, but there was a
third important competitor that the French businessmen did not consider, the Finnish
Crichton-Vulcan works. Augustin-Normand feared that for political reasons the Swedes
might get the deal, worth $2,000,000, or 60,000,000 francs, even though the Swedes had
a higher bid. The only thing needed to close the deal, Normand insisted, was more help
from the French Legation. De Coppet, the French representative, did not share
Normand’s optimism and warned the Foreign Minister not to be surprised if the Finnish
builder got the order. But then he reversed himself, reporting that Finland’s Prime
Minister was hostile to the deal because Crichton-Vulcan reportedly demanded a much
higher price. None of this mattered. Bartenbach determined who won the contracts, and
they went to Crichton-Vulcan and IvS.20
With the conclusion of a deal, British and French suspicions intensified, not only
about Crichton-Vulcan and its origins, but also regarding Bartenbach’s true role in
Finland. British firms attempting to do business with the Finnish Navy complained about
the presence of the German submarine experts. Some British diplomats began to fear that
Bartenbach was a German agent. Rennie, the British Minister in Helsinki, disputed this,
at least initially. Other British diplomats agreed with Rennie’s conclusion and considered
Bartenbach a loyal servant of the Finnish government. Most of the Germans in Finnish
employ occupied relatively minor positions in Finland and Rennie believed that in hiring
the Germans, the Finns were merely trying to ‘buy brains’ to make up for their
deficiencies in technical knowledge.21 Considering the chaotic economic state of
Germany in the early 1920s, it was certainly no surprise that Germans sought
employment abroad.
The question of who owned the Dutch firm IvS, which won the orders for the
submarine machinery, caused much concern. Further investigation by both Britain and
France revealed that the Dutch company was a front organization for Germania Werft of
Kiel. Germania Werft also controlled the Ing. Fijenoord shipbuilding yard in Rotterdam.
At the time of the November 1918 Armistice, the Germans had shipped a large amount of
submarine material over the Dutch border into the hands of this firm in order to avoid the
destruction of the components, or their surrender to the Allies. The IvS works were also
building three submarines for Turkey. Its activities allowed the Germans to experiment
with both submarine design and construction despite the strictures of the postwar
settlement to which they had agreed.22
Crichton-Vulcan’s winning of the contract, as well as their German connection,
surprised and angered the other firms involved. Moreover, the revelation came at a
potentially sticky diplomatic moment as the League of Nations was considering
Germany’s entry. The Finns picked the IvS design because they found it best suited to
their requirements and ‘no doubt…the price was right’. De Coppet insisted that French
and Italian bids were lower than those offered by Crichton-Vulcan. Marcel Haas of
Augustin-Normand was also upset with the results and made inquiries with France’s
representative in Holland in order to get a clear picture of IvS. Augustin-Normand even
took the radical step of talking to Vickers, one of their most fierce rivals, about the new
contender for naval orders.23
By the autumn of 1926, Rennie had changed his opinion regarding Bartenbach,
concluding that the reason for ‘these contracts going to a firm so closely connected with
Germany is undoubtedly the presence at the Ministry of Defence of Captain
Bartenbach… He works unostentatiously, behind the scenes, and is generally referred to
[by the Finns] as “our expert” Rennie mentioned these matters in his official reports in
order to show his superiors how anxious he was that Britain ‘should get in here with a
naval advisor’,24 an issue addressed shortly.
Germany’s role in the construction of the first Finnish submarine produced a rare
instance of Anglo-French cooperation in the cordon states. A fear of German influence
even took precedence over Anglo-French mutual contempt. The British, in reply to a
French request, joined their former ally in bringing the submarine matter to the attention
of the League of Nations’ Conference of Ambassadors. They asked the Conference’s
legal committee to rule whether or not the construction of the submarine was a violation
of Article 191 of the Treaty of Versailles. The French sent a particularly detailed report
on German complicity, mentioning Bartenbach by name. British priorities in regard to the
matter were also clear. The Marquess of Crewe, the British representative to Paris, was
cautioned not to allow the matter to cause a controversy with the German government, as
Britain was currently negotiating an import/export agreement with the Weimar
Republic.25 To Great Britain, trade was more important than the nation’s security future.
Apparently, no one in the British leadership thought to ask what nation might potentially
suffer the most harm from German submarines. The British did not fear the Germans, yet
French submarine building worried the Admiralty and in their view risked upsetting the
naval balance of power.
The French also officially notified the Finns, specifically the new Minister of Foreign
Affairs, Väinö Voionmaa, that Germania Werft of Kiel would be the true provider of the
material components for the submarines. They told the Finns that to keep from becoming
indirect participants in a violation of the Versailles Treaty, Helsinki would have to extract
a promise from the Finnish builder that it would not accept any material built in
Germany. Voionmaa professed his ignorance of the matter, which, since he had just taken
office, was entirely possible, and promised to discuss it with the Defense Department.
Moreover, he insisted that Finland would respect the Versailles Treaty, even though
Finland had not signed it. But Voionmaa added the caveat that he would not prevent the
builders from using the Kiel company’s materials if the Allied conference ruled in favor
of Germany. Great Britain never bothered to file any complaint with the Finns.26
In early 1927, as Britain and France awaited the ruling of the Conference of
Ambassadors, Finland ordered two more submarines from the Crichton-Vulcan works at
Turku, the Finnish Diet having voted over 40,000,000 marks for the construction of these
two vessels in late 1926. Awarding the contract for all three vessels to the same firm gave
the Finns a reduction in price. At the time, the Finns had not yet decided who would be
awarded the contract for the fourth and remaining small submarine. Augustin-Normand
had nursed a forlorn hope that it might get the orders for the third and fourth boats.27
Other French firms labored under similar illusions. The Compagnie Générale
d’Electricité asked for French diplomatic help to sell the Finns the batteries for their
submarines. The French firm believed that the order was being passed to the Swedish
Tudor Battery Company, over the opposition of the Finnish Defense Ministry’s design
bureau, as well as Crichton-Vulcan. When the contract went to Tudor in December 1927,
De Coppet protested, basing his arguments on the lower price of the French firm.
Procopé, the Finnish Foreign Minister, gave two reasons for choosing the Swedish firm:
its proximity, and the fact that it made better batteries. Neither of these reasons was
acceptable to the French. The reality was that Bartenbach had struck again, and this time
he had the help of a Swedish designer named Falckman who was also working for the
Finns. Moreover, Tudor was a Swedish firm in name only. The real owner was Krupp.28
In March 1927 the Conference of Ambassadors ruled that it was not possible to invoke
Article 191 of the Treaty of Versailles to prevent the Dutch firm from constructing
components for the Finnish submarines. The Conference stated that Article 191 was only
applicable to Germany itself, and could not be invoked against a foreign German firm.29
Legal hair-splitting indeed! The question that arises from this is how the League Council
of Ambassadors, an organization dominated by the French and British, could issue a
ruling so obviously injurious to the interests of Britain and France? Was it the Anglo-
German trade negotiations? Or was it the Conference’s opinion that there was,
technically, no legal way to move against IvS? Perhaps the fact that the conference was
buried in innumerable reports about German violations of Versailles contributed to its
unwillingness to act?30 Or was the real reason British and French weakness? The answer
remains unclear, though it is certain that London and Paris should have made a stronger
stand.
The construction of German submarines for Finland went on. The Finns ordered their
fourth boat, the tiny 99-ton vessel, from the Finnish firm Hietalahden Laivatelakka.
Bartenbach played a role here as well. Originally, Hietalahden Laivatelakka was to build
the craft with assistance from Electric Boat, but Bartenbach intervened and had the order
delayed. In December 1926, another Finnish shipyard, Kone Ja Siltarakennus Oy (Maksin
och Brobyggnads Ab) bought into Hietalahden Laivatelakka. Kone Ja Siltarakennus Oy’s
subsequent cooperation with IvS meant that the Germans built this vessel as well.
Delivered in 1930, and christened Saukko, it was the smallest submarine in the world,
displacing 114 tons, not the expected 99. Because of the strictures of the Treaty of
Dorpat, it could not be used on Lake Ladoga and instead served in the Baltic.31
The vessels from the IvS/Crichton-Vulcan combine were completed in 1930–31, but
not easily. The Soviet Union was as unhappy with German submarine building in Finland
as France and Britain, perhaps even more so because they actually tried to do something
about it. After the failure of an effort at rumor-mongering in which the Soviets sought to
convince the Finns that IvS was working with the Soviet Union, Moscow resorted to
labor action. Through the auspices of the Red International of Trade Unions, the Soviets
stirred up and funded a strike by metallurgical workers in Turku. This delayed Crichton-
Vulcan’s construction of the submarines by nine months. Bearing the names Vetehinen,
Vesihiisi, and Iku-Tursu, they became the forerunners of the German Type VII, the
primary weapon of the German submarine arm during the Second World War.32
In March 1930, Crichton-Vulcan received a contract for a fifth Finnish submarine, one
not called for in the naval bill. With the onset of the Great Depression the Finns lacked
the money to pay for this new boat, but the Germans wanted to build a 250-ton vessel as
a possible model for its wartime mobilization plans. The Germans and Finns entered into
a ‘gentleman’s agreement’ where Crichton-Vulcan would build the boat, and then
transfer its ownership to IvS. The funding for the project came from the German Navy.33
After its completion the submarine was manned by a German crew, who trained on it
for several months—a blatant violation of the Treaty of Versailles. Bartenbach even
succeeded in convincing the Finns to extend the time allotted to the Germans for the
clandestine training of submarine personnel for Nazi Germany’s new U-boat school.
Some of Germany’s next generation of submarine commanders and engineers trained in
Finland in the summer of 1933 and 1934. This resulted, of course, in British inquiries.
The Finnish government replied that the submarine was ‘private’ and insisted on their
intention to purchase it. At the time, the Eduskunta had voted no funds for its
acquisition.34
The fifth submarine, Vesikko, a 250/300-ton vessel, participated in the 1933 and 1934
Finnish naval maneuvers, but still did not belong to Finland. In a 19 August 1935
meeting, Arvi Oksala, the Minister of Defense, confessed to Herbert Grant Watson, a
British diplomat in Helsinki, that the vessel had been built with funds advanced by the
German government, something that the Finns had previously denied. Oksala also
insisted that the Finnish government intended to purchase the vessel, which they finally
did in January 1936. Prior to this, the German Navy used the Vesikko to train officers, an
activity which, at least until the 1935 Anglo-German Naval Agreement, violated the
naval provisions of the Versailles Treaty.35
Finland’s construction of its submarine fleet generated bad feeling between the Finns
on the one hand and the British and French on the other, and especially the British, who
came to fear the impact of what they perceived as a growing Finnish-German
relationship. Some Foreign Office officials expressed notable bitterness. One considered
the behavior of Finland to be generally unsatisfactory, and not just on the matter of the
submarines, though that was the primary sticking point. He wrote that the Finns,
[w]hile constantly expressing their desire to form their Navy on the

British model, they order their submarines from a German-controlled firm
and send their officers to be trained in Italy. Meanwhile, their promised
application for a naval advisor still hangs fire.36
The British officials should have been more disturbed by German efforts to develop their
submarine technology and train the cadre for a reborn U-boat force.
The Finns, for their part, had no particular desire to be drawn into the German orbit.
Some of Finland’s leaders had German sympathies, but there were also those who
preferred the British. Rennie’s initial assessment about the Finns ‘buying brains’ is in
some respects an accurate interpretation of Finland’s motivation. Finland could hire
Germans very easily, and it should come as no surprise that if an organization retains an
expert in a field, the expert will push matters toward those things with which they are
most familiar. A German submarine construction engineer is, obviously, most familiar
with German submarines. Additionally, the past reputation of German submarine
operations during the First World War, as well as Finno-German cultural ties, surely
impacted Finnish attitudes and decisions. Moreover, if the past treatment the Finns
received at the hands of the British, who consistently failed to complete their business
transactions in a timely manner, is included in the mixture, it should come as no surprise
that the Finns took their business elsewhere. The French also had undermined their hopes
of receiving the contract by the attempt of one of their companies to sell Finland a
submarine unsuitable for operations in the cold waters of the Baltic. When all of these
factors are added to Finland’s desire to get the best prices it could find, it is not surprising
that they turned to Germany.
Throughout the course of these events there was fear, particularly among the British,
that Finland was falling under Germany’s thumb. Despite some events that seemed to
indicate this, it was not nearly as true as the British believed at the time. Nevertheless, the
British felt that the appointment of a British naval advisor would be the best means of
countering the threat of German penetration. Both of these points are addressed shortly.
THE ARMORED SHIPS
In September 1927 the Finnish Parliament’s passage of the long-awaited naval bill
provided funds for the construction of two 3,900-ton armored coastal vessels. In
December 1928, the order for these warships went to the Crichton-Vulcan works in
Turku, the same firm that constructed the Finnish submarines with the assistance of IvS.
The presence of Bartenbach, who was Finland’s true naval advisor, determined the victor
in the struggle for the contract.37
The design of these armored ships owed much to a commission of the Finnish Navy’s
shipbuilding department headed by Commodore Einar Schwank. Among its six members
was Bartenbach. Various members of the Commission visited Germany, Sweden, and
Switzerland to study the manufacturing methods of firms that produced vessels for coast
defense, or their components. The tour of the Finnish Commission produced at least one
caustic remark from a British official: ‘It looks as if the Finns, for all their protestations,
do not really want a British naval advisor… They prefer to send a naval mission to
Switzerland!’ The Commission finally settled upon a 3,900-ton design equipped with
four 10-inch guns as its primary armament. The secondary armament of both vessels was
to consist of four 4.1-inch pieces and a number of anti-aircraft weapons.38
These ships, a unique type, had designs heavily influenced by the larger armored
coastal vessels constructed by Sweden and Denmark in previous decades, as well as those
built by British firms for Norway. The Finnish ships had a very shallow draft, only 14
feet, 9 inches, something critical for operations in coastal waters. The vessels had double
hulls and a wide beam of 55 feet and one-half inch. Top speed was a bit over 15 knots.
They also possessed a unique propulsion system with Germania diesel engines and a
Leonard electric drive. The Finns adopted this system because of the savings it offered in
weight and space and at the time only two other warships had similar engines, the US
aircraft carrier Langley and battleship New Mexico.39
Though much of the construction of these two warships was conducted by either the
Finnish or Dutch firms, a number of their components were subcontracted to other
corporations. For example, the Swedish firm Bofors manufactured the heavy guns, while
the smaller pieces, including the anti-aircraft weapons, came from Vickers and Madsen.40
The Finns had to obtain the hundreds of tons of armor plate for the ships from abroad
and contacted a number of foreign firms in an effort to find the best price. They budgeted
6,400,000 Finnish marks for the purchase of the armor plate, which meant they could pay
£18 16s per ton for the required 1,640 tons of steel plate. Of this amount, 1,200 tons were
20 millimeter and the other 440 tons were 55 millimeter plates. A British firm, William
Beardmore, eventually submitted a bid of £25 per ton, while a Swedish company offered
to fill the contract for £19 16s per ton. The Finns considered both of these offers too
expensive. The Finnish Minister of Defense hoped that the British government could
persuade Beardmore to drop its price, insisting that Finland preferred to buy British
goods. Commodore Schwank also hoped that the price would include the cost of ‘test
firing’, something that produced controversy and confusion as the situation developed.41
Rennie, for the sake of future British business with the Finnish military, and in spite of
a clear awareness of Finland’s military cooperation with Germany, urged the Foreign
Office to encourage Beardmore to drop its price. Carleton, the Beardmore representative
to whom the request was directed, had little hope that his firm could reduce what it
charged to the level asked by the Finns.42
Shortly afterward, strange revelations regarding the sale of the armored plate began to
surface. On 7 September 1929, Anton Floessel, the local Helsinki agent of Beardmore,
met with Vivian Burbury, of the British legation in Finland. Burbury referred to Floessel
in less than complimentary terms as ‘one of the gargoyles and almost intolerably
irrelevant and longwinded’, but believed, as did others, that he was a ‘pretty straight
fellow’. Floessel revealed that when Beardmore initially tendered their bids related to the
construction of the armored ships, a Swiss firm associated with Krupp worked as
intermediaries on the deal in an effort to earn a 10 percent commission. Beardmore
wanted nothing to do with paying such a commission and the deal went elsewhere.43
The point that Floessel wanted to press upon Burbury was that one-half of the 10
percent would have gone not to the Swiss firm, but to the Finnish Marine Department,
which pocketed a 5 percent commission on naval contracts. This agreed with suspicions
that Burbury had harbored concerning Commodore Schwank and his committee. Others
also leveled claims of corruption at the Finnish Defense Ministry.44
Other problems also surfaced. Beardmore had originally submitted a quote of £20 per
ton for the armor plate, but insisted that they raised their price to £25 per ton because the
Finns had supplied misleading information about their requirements. The problem came
from a Finnish stipulation that the steel plates be ‘fire-tested’. The mild nickel-steel plates
of the type required by the Finns were never ‘fire-tested’ by any firm and were not meant
to be. Beardmore had quoted a price of £25 per ton for the 1,200 tons of material, without
fire-testing, and £267 per ton for the 55 millimeter material, including fire-testing, a
measure that drove up the price dramatically. Understandably, the officials of the Finnish
Marine Department were appalled by Beardmore’s estimate of £267 per ton. Initially,
they believed, incorrectly, that it was a typing error for £26.7 per ton, probably meaning
£26 7s per ton.45
Burbury, in an effort to explain Beardmore’s estimate, met with Baron Yrjö-Koskinen,
the acting Minister of Foreign Affairs. Another Foreign Office official, for some
unknown reason, referred to the Baron as ‘par excellence the Turnip Finn’. Burbury, who
earlier noted his great amusement with the entire matter, quipped that he broached the
subject with ‘Le Baron’ in a meeting ‘otherwise devoted to gramophones and textiles’.46
Burbury explained that Beardmore’s bid was high because the steel plates were not
meant to be fire-tested. Burbury also asked that since the first part of the order for the
steel plates, 1,200 tons, had already been awarded to Bofors of Sweden, that Beardmore
should be given consideration in the filling of the remainder of the order. Baron Yrjö-
Koskinen agreed to bring the matter to the attention of his colleagues in the navy.47
Burbury’s efforts proved fruitless. Several days later he discovered the root of the
problem surrounding the matter of ‘fire-testing’. In a conversation with the British Naval
Advisor, Captain D.C. Despard, Burbury learned that ‘among other imbecilities the
[Finnish] Marine Department may have meant “proof-tested” when they said “fire-
tested”, which apparently means “conflagration-tested”’.48 The problem boiled down to
one of semantics.
‘Floessel the Unintelligible’, as Burbury referred to him on another occasion, tried to
get Beardmore to drop its price by £3 per ton so that he could bring the matter back to the
attention of the Finns. Burbury was wasting his time. The order for the remainder of the
steel plates also went to Bofors, the Finns insisting that it had to, or the price for the first
batch of steel plates would increase.49
The Finnish armored ships came into service in 1932 and 1933, respectively. They
were commissioned Väinämöinen and Ilmarinen, the names of two heroes from the epic
Finnish poem, the Kalevala.50 The larger vessels funded under the provisions of the hard-
fought naval bill had finally been completed.
Britain, despite its efforts in Finland throughout the 1920s, at least in regards to naval
armament sales, derived little economic benefit from its exertions and actually injured the
Finnish Navy’s development. With the onset of the Great Depression, Finland would
never have the resources to significantly expand its navy. Finland would enter the Second
World War with half a navy, lacking the important escort vessels vital to any naval force,
ships which it could have obtained in the 1920s if the ineptitude of Admiralty officials
had not prevented Finland’s purchase of British destroyers.51
FINLAND’S NAVAL ADVISOR AND BRITAIN’S QUEST FOR

CONTROL
Almost from its inception, the Finns sought a foreign advisor for their navy and both
Britain and France struggled to get one of their officers appointed to the job. The French
seem to have lost interest in the matter in the early 1920s, but the British continued to
pursue it and Finland reciprocated their interest, at least officially. Initially, Britain
wanted a naval advisor to further British influence and advance British business interests
in Finland, both of which could be considered normal activity for the military officers of
any nation posted abroad during the interwar period. But as British awareness of the
influence of the pro-German faction in Finland increased, particularly in the Finnish
Army, and Finnish military connections with Germany deepened, especially after the
initial submarine deal, the perceived role of a naval advisor took on new meaning—that
of a counter-weight to German ambitions.52
During the genesis of the Finnish Navy there were several attempts to foist a foreign
naval advisor upon the Finns, or to have a foreign officer named the head of the Finnish
Navy. In 1920 some pro-German elements in Finland lobbied for the appointment of a
German admiral. This came to nothing, as did talks for the assignment of British and
French admirals. The selection of a British officer was more popular with the Finnish
authorities and remained the first choice of most government and military figures. The
British hoped to capitalize on these sympathies and believed that they had influential
friends in the upper levels of the Finnish military and government, Commodore von
Schoultz being one of the most prominent. Schoultz still had many friends in the Royal
Navy and Rennie wrote that ‘his presence is a guarantee that preference will be given to
Great Britain when there is any question of increasing the resources of the new-born
Finnish navy’.53
The French also attempted to have Capitaine de vaisseau Biffaud, the head of the
French naval mission to Finland, named as the official naval advisor. General Kivakäs,
the Commander of Coastal Defense, and Commodore von Schoultz, believed that the idea
of a French naval advisor was ‘silly’. They preferred the appointment of a British officer
because most high-ranking Finns were required to learn at least some English and to pass
an examination in that language. In contrast, very few Finnish officers spoke French.54
The French pressured the Finns to appoint Biffaud as the naval advisor, a matter about
which the Finns kept the British well informed. Capitaine de corvette D’Ythurbide, who
had held a three-year engagement with the Finnish Navy as a ‘naval counsellor’,
expended considerable effort to secure the appointment of his countryman. At the same
time, Finnish Navy officials warned the British that the navy’s budget had been cut in
half and that until the Diet passed a budget for 1921, the navy would have no funds for a
naval advisor.55
The British Admiralty suggested offering Finland the services of a retired officer and
Rennie passed this suggestion on to the Finns in late 1922.56 Nothing came of the matter
and the issue remained dormant for nearly three years while Finland tried, unsuccessfully,
to solve its naval funding problems, as well as deal with the ethnic and linguistic dispute.
The matter resurfaced in April 1925 in the wake of the departure of General Kirke.
Rennie was told that the Finns had ‘practically decided’ to ask the British government for
a naval advisor. The Finnish Ministry of Defense wanted to make the request as soon as
possible, but the Cabinet was reluctant because of the then strained Anglo-Soviet
relationship resulting from the publication of the ‘Zinoviev Letter’ and Britain’s
subsequent severing of relations with the Soviet Union.57 More delays followed.
The matter resurfaced again in 1926, but an obstacle still remained: the cost. The
Finns insisted that the retention of a British officer was too costly as the officer’s salary
would rank second only to that of the Finnish president. Rennie recommended that the
Admiralty lend an officer to the Finns and assume the cost. Rennie’s report on this matter
included an interesting statement that not only reveals British assessment of Finnish
feelings about the strategic importance of Britain, but also Britain’s intentions if Finland
suffered an attack: ‘Rightly or wrongly, the feeling here is that the chief foreign factor on
which the separate existence of Finland rests is the British Fleet.’58
The Admiralty consented, but the Treasury was not so agreeable. The British economy
was suffering from postwar stagnation and many in the government of Stanley Baldwin,
as well as King George V, sought to curb government spending to allow a reduction in
taxes. The Foreign Office appealed, insisting that ‘all that is asked…is that the Treasury
shall forgo actual financial benefit from the fact that the officer is lent to another
country’.59
The Treasury remained intransigent. Apparently, its officials did not believe that the
appointment of a naval advisor would bring any significant economic gain to Great
Britain. Seven months later, after the contracts for the Finnish submarines went to the
German-Dutch firm, a Foreign Office official expressed his bitterness: ‘Good evidence (if
any more were needed) of the close connection between naval advisors and naval orders
which the Treasury tried to dispute.’ Rennie agreed, telling his superiors that the
submarine contracts went to the German-Dutch firm because of the presence of
Bartenbach. In Rennie’s view, Britain needed a naval advisor in Finland.60
The perception of growing German influence began to have an impact upon the slow-
moving British officials. Rear-Admiral H. Hotham encouraged the Foreign Office to act
on the still unresolved question. He, like Rennie, was ‘anxious’, and wrote that ‘this
question should not be dropped…especially as the Germans seem to be getting more
firmly established each day and consequently more difficult to dislodge’. By this time,
February 1927, the appointment of a naval advisor had become more a means by which
Britain could offset German influence than a tool for British economic gain.61
The Foreign Office informed Admiral Hotham that they wanted to wait to ‘stir up the
Finnish Minister’ about a British naval advisor for Finland. The Foreign Office had once
again approached the Treasury about funding such a project and was awaiting their
decision. This time, prodded by warnings of growing German influence and the need to
counter it, the Treasury unclenched its fist and Britain offered Finland the services of a
retired naval officer.62
Finally, the diplomats and sailors had received the approval of the Treasury and the
way seemed clear for the appointment of a British naval advisor. The Finns hoped to
retain the services of Rear-Admiral W.W.Fisher, but he had just become Fourth Lord of
the Admiralty. The Finns rebuffed the subsequent British effort, citing the political
difficulties between Britain and the Soviet Union.63
The issue continued to linger. In mid-May 1927, the Treasury once again changed its
policy on lending naval advisors to foreign nations, agreeing to provide half of the
officer’s pay and incur the normal pension expenses. The nation receiving the advisor
would have to absorb the remaining expenses related to pay and travel costs, and
contribute toward the officer’s pension for death or disability incurred while in foreign
service. The Admiralty also adopted new provisions that opened up their training
facilities to foreign officers.64
These policy changes were important. Before 1927 the cost of missions had generally
been borne by the host nation, but the Admiralty got the Treasury to begin paying the
costs to make the missions more attractive to foreign nations. The navy had come to see
missions as a means of increasing British prestige, and supporting British shipbuilding.

Foreign sales kept skilled shipyard workers in the industry.65
At the end of May 1927, the Finnish government relayed its intention to make a
formal application for a naval advisor. But, Helsinki’s insistence that the appointment
would provoke bad feelings in the Soviet Union persisted, and the matter dragged on into
1928. Finnish officials, such as Procopé, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, favored the
appointment and lobbied on its behalf, believing that the move would link Finland more
closely with Great Britain. Meanwhile, Estonia, Finland’s neighbor, had accepted the
appointment of a British Air Mission, and Rennie hoped that this would assuage Finnish
fears of angering the Soviet Union. Another Foreign Office official called the Finnish
concerns ‘ludicrous’, and they may very well have appeared so in distant London.
Though it is certainly possible that the Finns were looking for excuses to delay a
decision. But, in Finland, fear of the Soviet Union was very real. Finland’s refusal to
appoint a British naval advisor in 1927 and early 1928 is also not surprising considering
the very strained state of Anglo-Soviet relations resulting from the Arcos raid in May
1927 and the subsequent severing of relations between the two states. Some believed war
was imminent.66
The official Finnish application for a naval advisor came in August 1928. Rennie
recommended the appointment of a pensioned officer and said that he should be
‘youngish, keen, of a certain social standing, and, if possible, knowing German with an
aptitude for foreign languages’.67
In November, with Rennie’s approval, the Admiralty recommended Lieutenant-
Commander D.C.Despard as the British Naval Advisor to Finland.68 Finally, the British
had what they wanted, but the appointment came too late to have any great impact upon
the naval contracts. The appointment also had no hope of offsetting German influence, at
least not in naval matters. Indeed there were proGerman elements in the government and
the military, as well as Finnish groups that flirted with fascism. Radical right-wing
political groups became a problem in Finland for a very short time in the 1930s, but
Germany’s political grip upon Finland was not as tight as the British believed.
Why though, did it take so long to place a naval advisor in Finland? Obviously, the
foibles of the British bureaucracy provided some stumbling blocks. But the Finns
consistently found obstacles to delay any appointment. Forsén and Forsén contend,
correctly, that Britain sought to undermine Bartenbach’s position by the appointment of
their own naval advisor. But they also insist that the Finns put off the British until they
felt they no longer had any choice, which indeed seems to be what took place. When the
Finns did consent to take a British naval advisor, they got the British to agree that their
man would have nothing to do with Finnish naval construction,69 effectively isolating
him from the most important development decisions. As was so often the case, the Finns
got what they wanted.
The position of naval advisor became a permanent one and a British officer worked
with the Finns until the outbreak of the Second World War. Despard remained in Finland
until being replaced by Captain N.C.Moore on 1 April 1935. The British also secured the
appointment of an air advisor to the Finnish Air Force and came to believe that holding
these two positions gave them a firm grip upon the Finnish military. A conversation at a
1936 dinner between Vice-Admiral Sir Thomas Troubridge, the British naval attaché to
Germany, and the British Air Advisor, Captain West, reveals the British attitude on this
point. West remarked to Troubridge that Britain had Finland ‘pretty well roped
off…since he [West] runs the air-force and Moore the Navy!’.70 Nothing could have been
further from the truth.
CONCLUSIONS
In Finland, the French and British finally found something upon which they agreed:
German submarine building threatened their economic positions. Most amazing of all is
that neither Britain nor France expressed any fear regarding the military danger that both
potentially faced from a revived German submarine program. They remained
unconcerned about the foundation being laid for the possible rebuilding of a force that
could threaten Britain’s so vital sea lanes, as well as the French Navy’s strategy of
gathering strength from its empire and allies. What the British and French feared most
were their economic losses in the face of German industrial competition. Despite this
grievous and obviously potentially dangerous violation of the Treaty of Versailles,
Britain did not want to make very much of the matter. Doing so, they thought, might
endanger their trade negotiations with Weimar Germany. The French protested, but did
little else, and even supported the efforts of French firms to sell the batteries for the
submarines the Germans were building, as well as the mines and torpedoes. Moreover,
they also supported requests from French firms wanting to sell other armaments to
Finland.71 Should not Paris have at least pressured Finland to sever its ties with the
puppet German firm?
Finland also cannot escape without criticism, especially the Finnish military. Some
British diplomats speculated that the defense forces cooperated with the Germans in
using the submarine as a training tool without the knowledge of the Finnish
government.72 They were wrong. The Finnish government knew very well what it was
doing, and was quite successful at getting exactly what it wanted for its naval defense,
and at the best price. Indeed, they even managed to get a foreign government to subsidize
their naval building program, as well as improve the Crichton-Vulcan shipyard,
investment that was necessary in order to build the submarines in Finland.73 Moreover,
the wily Finns developed their navy despite the objections and interference of three of the
most powerful nations in the world, France, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union, while
getting a fourth, Germany, to help pay for it! Nevertheless, the Finns assisted the
Germans in violating the Treaty of Versailles and played a role in Germany’s clandestine
rearmament efforts. This cooperation helped lay some of the groundwork for Nazi
Germany’s U-boat arm.
German involvement in Finland provides a notable example of a nation using
economics as a weapon for achieving a political goal, not the other way around, as
Britain and France tried to do. The Germans managed to get Finland to subsidize some of
its rearmament experiments by convincing the Finns to build the submarines with which
the Germans wanted to experiment. When the Finns did not have the money to do
everything Germany wanted, the German Navy stepped in with the necessary funds. This
allowed Berlin to prepare for the eventual revocation of the Treaty of Versailles once
they had a leader with the nerve to do publicly what the Weimar government only dared
to do behind closed doors.
The importance of a ‘naval advisor’, as opposed to a ‘naval attaché’ or ‘naval

mission’, also becomes clear. Bartenbach served as Finland’s ‘naval advisor’ and ensured
the contracts went where he wished. Britain’s dispatch of Kirke’s mission failed to
prevent the Finns from ‘buying German’ and this failure can partially be attributed to
Britain’s earlier inability to place a naval advisor, something that might have been
overcome, before Bartenbach’s appearance, by a simple willingness to pay the officer’s
salary.
The examples of Jolivet in Poland, and Vennin in Latvia, also demonstrate the
importance of controlling the position of naval advisor. In the case of Jolivet, who was
officially head of the French Naval Mission, and of Vennin, who served as naval attaché,
they were not ‘official’ naval advisors, but each played this role. And that was what
mattered. Bartenbach’s presence certainly proved this to the Foreign Office, and the
comment of one of their officials bears repeating: ‘[G]ood evidence (if any more were
needed) of the close connection between naval advisors and naval orders.’74
During the 1927–34 period a new and successful contender for the region’s naval
contracts entered the arena—Germany. Britain and France both failed to meet this threat,
diplomatically, as well as economically. The mid-1930s would see more failures. And in
naval matters, the Anglo-German Naval Agreement would provide the ultimate example.
NOTES
2. Annual Report for Finland, 1924, FO 371/10425; Vennin, 1 Apr. 1924, BIM no. 4, and
Vennin to MM, 28 Feb. 1924, SHM, 1BB7 129 Lettonie.
3. Egerton to Rennie, 16 Mar. 1925, and Translation: The Finnish Government’s Bill to the
Riksdag for the Building of a Coastal Fleet, President of the Republic K.H.Ståhlberg’, 27
Feb. 1925, FO 371/10989.
4. Egerton to Rennie, 16 Mar. 1925, FO 371/10989.
5. Ibid.; Conway’s 1922–1946, p. 365.
6. See Note 4.
7. MacKillop to Chamberlain, 24 Nov. 1925, FO 371/10989.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. Rennie to Chamberlain, 25 Dec. 1925, FO 371/10989.
12. Enckell, ‘Finland’s Flotta’, p. 581; Tikka, ‘Die Finnische Marine’, p. 131; Wihtol, ‘La
Pensèe Navale Finlandaise’, pp. 227–8.
13. Wihtol, ‘La pensée navale finlandaise’, p. 227; Keeling to Chamberlain, 18 Sept. 1926, FO
371/11752; Rössler, The U-boat, p. 91.
14. Rennie to Palairet, 14 Feb. 1927, FO 371/12564.
15. Björn Forsén and Annette Forsén, ‘German Secret Submarine Export, 1919–1935’, in
Donald J.Stoker Jr and Jonathan A.Grant (eds), Girding for Battle: The Arms Trade in a
Global Perspective, 1815–1940 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003); Burbury to Collier, 12 Dec.
1929, FO 371/14013; Rennie to Chamberlain, 13 Mar. 1926, FO 371/11752; de Coppet to
MAE, 13 Mar. 1926, and Setälä to de Coppet, 13 Mar. 1926, AMAE, Finlande 9; Halpern, A
Naval History of World War I, p. 297.
16. Forsén and Forsén, ‘German Secret Submarine Export’.
17. Ibid.; Barton Whaley, Covert German Rearmament, 1919–1939: Deception and
Misperception (Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1984), p. 27.
18. Forsén and Forsén, ‘German Secret Submarine Export’; Burbury to Collier, 12 Dec. 1929,
FO 371/14013; Rennie to Palairet, 14 Feb. 1927, FO 371/12564.
19. Forsén and Forsén, ‘German Secret Submarine Export’; Allison Winthrop Saville, ‘The
Development of the German U-boat Arm, 1919–1935’ (PhD diss., University of
Washington, 1963), p. 164; Augustin-Normand to MAE, 2 Feb. 1926, s.i., MAE to French
Legation, probably 9 Feb. 1926, and MAE[?] to Augustin-Normand, probably 9 Feb. 1926,
AMAE, Finlande 9.
20. Augustin-Normand to MAE, 19 June 1926, and de Coppet to MAE, 10 and 17 July 1926,
AMAE, Finlande 9; Forsén and Forsén, ‘German Secret Submarine Export, 1919–1935’.
21. Burbury to Collier, 12 Dec. 1929, FO 371/14013; Rennie to Palairet, 14 Feb. 1927, FO
371/12564; Smith (Becos Traders) to Bar & Stroud, 17 May 1927, FO 371/12565.
22. Normand to Vickers, 27 Oct. 1926, and interview of Hay in Chancery, FO minute, 25 Nov.
1926, FO 371/11752; Rössler, The U-boat, pp. 88–91.
23. Saville, ‘The Development of the German U-boat Arm’, p. 66; de Coppet to MAE, 16 Sept.
1926, ‘Commande de sous-marins par le Gouvernement Finlandais’, 26 Oct. 1926, British
Embassy Paris to MAE, 3 Dec. 1926, AMAE, Finlande 9.
24. Rennie to Fisher, 13 Jan. 1927, FO 371/11752.
25. Palairet to Crewe, 29 Dec. 1926, FO 371/11752; Salaün to MAE, 24 Nov. 1926, and ‘Note
pour le Secretariat de la Conference des Ambassadeurs’, 9 Dec. 1926, AMAE, Finlande 9.
26. De Coppet to MAE, 16 Jan. 1927, AMAE, Finlande 9; Forsén and Forsén, ‘German Secret
Submarine Export’.
27. Rennie to Chamberlain, 4 and 29 Jan. 1927, and Rennie to Fisher, 13 Jan. 1927, FO
371/12564; Augustin-Normand to MAE, 23 Feb. 1927, AMAE, Finlande 9.
28. S.i., Le Directeur de la Manufacture d’Accumulateurs Compagnie Générale d’Electricité to
MAE, 29 Dec. 1927, and de Coppet to MAE, 22 Jan. 1928, AMAE, Finlande 9.
29. Fromageot, ‘Note du Comité de Redaction concernant la construction des sous-marins
Finlandais sur des chantiers Allemands en Hollande’, 8 Mar. 1927, and Fromageot note with
same title and date, AMAE, Finlande 9.
30. Forsén and Forsén, ‘German Secret Submarine Export’, and their fn. 32.
31. Forsén and Forsén, ‘German Secret Submarine Export’; Conway’s 1922–46, p. 365; Keeling
to Chamberlain, 6 Oct. 1927, FO 371/12564.
32. Ibid.
34. Henderson to Simon, 4 Mar. 1935, FO 371/19434; Rössler, The U-boat, p. 97; Forsén and
Forsén, ‘German Secret Submarine Export’.
35. Grant Watson to Hoare, 1 and 22 Aug. 1935, FO 371/19434; Conway’s 1922–46, p. 365.
The Vesikko is a museum ship at Helsinki’s Suomenlinna fortress.
36. Collier, FO minute, 2 Nov. [1927], FO 371/12564.
37. Ekman, ‘Finlands flotta’, pp. 581–2; Per-Olof Ekman, ‘Finlands pansarkepp (1)’, Tidskrift i
Sjöväsendet 137 (1974), 135–6.
38. Ekman, ‘Finlands pansarkepp’, pp. 135–6; A.C.Hardy, Warships at Work, quoted in Ekman,
‘Finlands pansarkepp,’ pp. 145–6; Rennie to Chamberlain, 15 Feb. 1928, Rennie to Palairet,
16 Feb. 1928, and Collier, FO minute, 15 Feb. 1928, FO 371/13295.
39. A.C.Hardy, Warships at Work, quoted in Ekman, ‘Finlands pansarkepp’, p. 146; Wihtol, ‘La
pensée navale finlandaise’, pp. 229–30; Conway’s 1922–46, p. 365.
40. Conway’s 1922–46, p. 365; Ekman, ‘Die Schiffe und Boote der finnischen Marine’, p. 714.
41. Rennie telegram, 4 Sept. 1929, Floessel to Beardmore, copy of an earlier letter later given to
Burbury, 14 Oct. 1929, and Burbury to Collier, 17 Oct. 1929, FO 371/14012; Ekman,
‘Finlands pansarkepp’, p. 136.
42. Rennie telegram, 4 Sept. 1929, and Baggallay to Jubb, 10 Sept. 1929, FO 371/14012.
43. Burbury to Collier, 10 Oct. 1929, FO 371/14012.
44. Burbury to Collier, 10 and 17 Oct. 1929, FO 371/14012.
45. Burbury to Collier, 10 Oct. 1929, and Floessel to Beardmore, 14 Oct. 1929, FO 371/14012;
Ekman, ‘Finlands pansarkepp’, p. 136. The measurements and prices vary in the documents.
46. See Note 43.
47. See Note 44.
48. Ibid.
49. Ibid.; Floessel to Beardmore, 14 Oct. 1929, and Chancery to FO, 4 Dec. 1929, FO
371/14012.
50. Ekman, ‘Finlands pansarkepp’, pp. 136–8; Ekman, ‘Finlands flotta’, p. 583.
51. Tikka, ‘Die Finnische Marine’, p. 131.
52. Scale, ‘Military report on Finland for 1920’, 11 Jan. 1921, FO 371/6767.
53. Kidston to Curzon, 25 Oct. 1920, FO 371/5388; Rennie to Curzon, 14 Feb. 1922, FO
371/8100.
54. Kidston to Curzon, 25 Oct. 1925, FO 371/8100.
55. Kidston to FO, 18 Feb. 1921, FO 371/6769.
56. Flint to FO, 20 Oct. 1922, and Palairet to Admiralty, 12 Nov. 1922, FO 371/11752.
57. Rennie to Palairet, 25 Apr. 1925, FO 371/12564; Williams, Labour and Russia, p. 17.
58. Rennie to Orde, 23 Mar. 1926, FO 371/11752.
59. Marrack to Orde, 8 June 1926, Meiklejohn to Admiralty, 7 Sept. 1926, and Gregory to
Meiklejohn, 29 Sept. 1926, FO 371/11752; Roskill, Naval Policy Between the Wars, Vol. 1,
pp. 443–5; Derek H.Aldcroft, The Inter-War Economy: Britain, 1919–1939 (London:
Batsford, 1970), pp. 304–5.
60. Fass to Gregory, 8 Oct. 1926, FO 371/11752; Collins, FO minute, 30 May [1927], FO
371/12565; Rennie to Fisher, 13 Jan. 1927, FO 371/12564.
61. Hotham to Orde, 4 Feb. 1927, and Rennie to Palairet, 2 Feb. 1927, FO 371/11752.
62. Orde to Hotham, 12 Feb. 1927, Rennie to Palairet, 2 Feb. 1927, and Palairet to Rennie, 15
Mar. 1927, FO 371/11752.
63. Rennie to Palairet, 14 Mar. 1927, and Dewar to Palairet, 14 May 1927, 371/11752.
64. Dewar to Palairet, 14 May 1927, FO 371/11752.
66. Rennie to Palairet, 24 May 1927, FO 371/11752; Rennie to Chamberlain, 20 June 1928, and
Collier, FO minute, 20 July [1928], FO 371/13295; Keeble, Britain and the Soviet Union, pp.
105–7.
67. Rennie to Palairet, 23 Aug. 1928, FO 371/13295.
68. Flint to FO, 24 Nov. 1928, FO 371/13295.
70. Troubridge Diaries, 10 or 11 Oct. 1936; Navy List, 1931 (London, 1931), p. 421; Navy List,
1939 (London, 1939), p. 548.
71. MAE to MM, 13 Mar. 1928, ‘Note pour la sous-direction d’Afrique et du Levant’, 28 Dec.
1926, Deiss to MAE, 10 Jan. 1926, and MAE to Ministre de la Guerre, 19 Jan. 1927,
AMAE, Finlande 9.
72. Henderson to Collier, 7 Mar. 1935, FO 371/19434.
73. Saville, ‘The Development of the German U-boat Arm’, pp. 287–8.
74. Collins, FO minute, 30 May [1927], FO 371/12565.
8
The Final Sales, 1933–39
The 1933 advent of Hitler’s regime, and the arms build-up that followed, produced a
distinct shift in the military balance of power. Hitler’s remilitarization of his adopted
nation, as well as the dictator’s virulent demands for territorial readjustment, nurtured
already nascent fears of German aggression. The apprehensive small states of the eastern
Baltic increased their respective armaments expenditures, and France and Britain,
eventually, began to rearm. Fear of Nazi ambitions generated a final round of naval
contracts before the specter of war once again descended upon Europe, and the pre-1939
atmosphere of uncertainty produced new shifts in French and British influence in the
nations of the eastern Baltic.
FINLAND
After the completion of the major vessels called for under its 1927 Naval Bill, Finland
possessed the majority of the warships with which it went to war in 1939, and again in
1941. The army remained the most important instrument in Finland’s defense policy, and
understandably so, but the navy did enjoy some expansion. Finland constructed a few
vessels in its own yards in the middle and late 1930s, the most important being two 17
ton minesweepers launched in 1936–37. Finnish firms also built about a dozen similar
craft, as well as two 300 ton minelayers in 1939–41. Additionally, a number of motor
launches were purchased or constructed for the navy and coast guard in the decade before
the war.1
In 1932, the Finns restructured the entire armed forces command system to centralize
the leadership, as well as the Civic Guard, Finland’s voluntary reserve force. The
reorganization was driven partly by the fallout from a failed coup attempt by members of
the Lapua movement, Finland’s fascist party. Many of its leaders had been officers in the
military, or held appointments in the Civic Guard. The group discredited itself in 1931
with its botched attempt to overthrow the government by kidnapping former President
K.J. Ståhlberg. The revolt failed, the movement collapsed, and its leaders went to prison.
Despite the reorganization, the Finnish military continued to be plagued by a shortage of
funds and only held its first inter-service maneuvers in 1928.2
During the middle and much of the late 1930s, the Finnish Navy remained starved for
new construction funds. Moreover, it suffered tactically from the lack of a naval air arm.
Finland had seaplane bases in half a dozen of its coastal cities, and two small squadrons
of naval observation planes, but unfortunately for the navy, the majority of the aircraft
and facilities remained under the control of the air force.3
By the late 1930s, the nation’s military position did not inspire confidence, even
though the Finnish government had never spent less that 12 percent of its total annual
budget on defense, and military spending increased annually. By the late 1930s the Finns
realized that even more was required.4
In February 1938, the Armament Committee of the Finnish Ministry of Defense
proposed to increase armaments expenditures from 1.2 billion marks to almost 2.7 billion
marks, the money to be spent over a seven-year period. The bill passed in May, but the
only way to obtain this sum was a dramatic 20 percent increase in income taxes. More
funds were added to the 1939 defense budget at Mannerheim’s request.5
With the outbreak of the Winter War came obvious dramatic increases in Finland’s
military needs. Though most funds went to the army and air force, and rightly so, the
Finns built some naval vessels at home and made one final effort to acquire British
warships.
In late December 1939, the Finns tried to purchase the first pair of a series of torpedo
boats that Thornycroft was building for the Philippines government. The Admiralty
described the Finns as ‘very anxious’ to purchase the boats, and in an uncharacteristically
efficient act, included a draft telegram on the matter to speed Foreign Office efforts to get
the government of the US possession to agree to the sale, and even offered the
Philippines facilities for replacing the boats at the earliest possible date.6
Finnish luck when dealing with the British continued to be consistent. Philippines
President Manuel Quezon was out of the country at the time of the request. Technically,
the final decision lay in his hands. But General Douglas MacArthur, who was serving as
military advisor to the armed forces of the Philippines, as well as Field Marshall of its
army, opposed the transfer of the vessels to the Finns. MacArthur considered the vessels
necessary for the defense program of the Philippines, and feared the repercussions that
might fall upon the US possession from the Soviet Union! His advisors supported his
decision.7
The Foreign Office tried to convince the General to change his mind, but their efforts
proved fruitless. Moreover, the return of President Quezon changed nothing. A Foreign
Office official commented that ‘the reasons advanced by Gen. MacArthur and the
Philippinos [sic] seem to me singularly weak’.8
LATVIA
In the late 1930s, as the war clouds gathered and Europe began to rearm, Latvia
embarked upon a military replacement program. They had intended to expand their
submarine force in 1927, the idea resurfaced again in 1935, and on both occasions
Latvia’s poverty buried the nation’s naval building efforts. In May 1937, the Latvian
government approached the British about purchasing two submarines, possibly during the
next year. The Latvians hoped that the Admiralty would offer no objections to such an
arrangement, and also mentioned that they would hate to buy the vessels somewhere else,
particularly in Germany, because of the expense and inconvenience involved, and
because Latvia had a history of ‘buying British’.9 Though this was not true in regard to
naval armaments, much of the equipment of the Latvian Army had indeed come from
Britain. The mention of turning to Germany for arms looks suspiciously like an effort on
the part of the Latvians to frighten Britain into lending assistance to the small state.
The final sales, 1933–39 131
The Admiralty had no objections to Latvia placing such orders as long as the Secretary
of State agreed, but was unwilling to give any definite assurances until learning the
specifics of the designs. At the time of the coronation of George VI, Latvian President
Munters approached the British once again, this time for help in placing orders for British
arms. The War Office said they could do little to help Latvia. This caused concern at the
Foreign Office, particularly to Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden. He feared that the
Latvians would go elsewhere, and, as a result, since the Baltic States were discussing the
coordination of their arms purchases, Britain might lose not only the orders for the
Latvian replacement program, but also the potential contracts of the other Baltic States.
He believed that this would have ‘serious consequences, both commercial and political’
and asked the War Office: ‘Is there anything we can do to prevent such a result?’ The
Latvian Navy failed to benefit from the increased funds made available for rearmament in
Latvia and continued ‘to remain the Cinderella of its country’s defence forces’.10
The Latvians also approached the French, their traditional supplier of warships. In
June 1937, General Hartmanis, the Chief of the Latvian General Staff, asked the advice
of the new French naval attaché, Capitaine de frégate Arzur, regarding a new naval
program for Latvia. Arzur insisted that the primary role of the Latvian Navy should be
the defense of the coast, particularly the Gulf of Riga. At the time, the tiny force was too
small to fulfill this mission. Hartmanis professed Latvia’s intention to create a division of
six submarines, thus enabling Latvia to maintain a constant surveillance of its coastline,
because at least two could always be kept at sea. Arzur believed that this solution was the
most judicious, and then used the meeting to try to convince the Latvians to build a
destroyer-sized vessel to use for official visits.11
Attending this same meeting was the Latvian Defense Minister, General Antons
Balodis. The French always sought to expand their influence in Latvia and Arzur
demonstrated this by assuring General Balodis that his nephew, Karlis Balodis, would
receive special attention when the young man began his course of study at the French
École Navale. At a previous meeting with the General, Arzur pointed out the weakness of
the Latvian Navy in comparison with the nation’s other armed forces and insisted that
Latvia needed a naval policy.12 Obviously, the French naval attaché’s task of obtaining
orders for warships had not changed since Vennin’s day.
In 1939, the Latvian government decided to purchase four additional submarines, a
3,000-ton minelaying yacht, as well as a few motor torpedo boats. They planned to equip
the minelayer with relatively large caliber guns and also use it as the state yacht.
Negotiations began with the British, French, and Germans regarding the construction, but
the hurried preparations for war that the Great Powers were then undertaking made them
unwilling to assist the naval development of nations with which they had no formal
alliances.13
Circumstances forced Latvia to rely on foreign warship builders during most of the
period between the wars, but the nation sought to break its dependency by developing its
own internal shipbuilding industry. When the Soviets occupied the Baltic States, the
Latvian government was building, in its own yard, the 3,000-ton minelaying yacht
foreseen in 1939. Moreover, in their yards at Liepāja, in the Vairogs factory in Riga, as
well as in other places, they produced heavy equipment, repaired vessels as large as
ocean liners, built fighter planes based upon native designs, and sea mines, and anti-
submarine weapons. In the event of war, they planned to mine the sea lanes to Riga. The
navy’s peacetime strength was 650 men.14
ESTONIA
In the early 1930s, Tôrvand, a former Army Chief of Staff, and Kerem, a former Defense
Minister, the two figures acquitted in the destroyer scandal, founded an organization to
raise money for a submarine by public subscription. The poverty of the Estonian people,
and possibly the tarnished reputations of these two men, prevented them from gathering
sufficient funds. But they did collect 160,000 kronor by December 1935, money that
went into the state’s naval defense coffers.15 Their work continued and by 1940 would
produce results.
In January 1938, using the funds raised by Tôrvand and Kerem, the Estonians began
negotiations with Thornycroft for a motor torpedo boat. The negotiations hit a snag over
an arbitration clause, some of the Estonian leadership not being completely satisfied with
the terms. But the Estonian government eventually approved the deal and the contract
was signed on 24 January 1939. Some Foreign Office officials believed that the delay
was influenced by the bad publicity the Power-Boat Company had received in the House
of Commons. In late 1938 and early 1939, Power-Boat had been denounced in Parliament
for selling the Admiralty a number of torpedo boats with faulty and obsolete engines.16
During these negotiations, the Commander-in-Chief of the Estonian Navy, Captain
W.Grenz, left his post to take a position with the Non-Intervention Committee in Spain.
The committee took on a number of Estonian officers in an attempt to broaden its
international basis. The Non-Intervention Committee was established under Anglo-
French auspices to inhibit foreign involvement in the Spanish Civil War, particularly the
importation and delivery of arms. Grenz’s appointment aroused some unwarranted
suspicion and concern in the Foreign Office. One official remarked that ‘this looks to me
a strange first a “fishy” performance. I feel Captain Grents [sic] shd be watched.’17
Finland also contributed an officer to the Non-Intervention Committee—the long retired
Commodore von Schoultz.
In 1937, Estonia began building warships in its own yards. Two years later they
commissioned the 500-ton gunboat Pikkeri. It was the most modern vessel in the
Estonian fleet and also served as the presidential yacht. Estonian yards probably built
another gunboat in 1938–39 for the coast guard as a replacement for the obsolete 100-ton
Kow. The Ministry of Defense placed an order at the State Harbor Works for the building
of two modern naval patrol boats in the spring of 1940,18 but these were not completed
before the Soviet invasion.
The money for the two patrol boats, which the Estonians planned to use for anti-
submarine duties, came from the continuing drive to raise money for a submarine through
public subscription. When it ended its work in early March 1940, the National Submarine
Collection Fund had gathered a total of 528,000 kronor through voluntary contributions,
never enough to buy a submarine, but enough to make other purchases.19
The Estonian Navy had no air arm, but the Estonian Air Force had a small fleet
aviation section. By the outbreak of the Second World War, the Estonians had acquired a
mixed bag of aircraft to use in support of their navy. In August 1937, the naval aviation
unit had 10 officers, 18 non-commissioned officers, and 60 enlisted men. They operated
two squadrons, one of six observation planes and another with four fighters. Dutch
Fokker CVs made up the pursuit squadron and Hawker Harts served as observers. There
were also some Gordou-Leseur and Czech Smolik training planes, as well as one De
Havilland Moth liaison aircraft. Virtually all were obsolete in 1939.20
LITHUANIA
From the beginning of Klaipeda’s incorporation into Lithuania, the new nation suffered
problems with the area’s German inhabitants. German pressure intensified after Hitler
annexed the Sudetenland, and one week after the occupation of the rump Czech state,
Hitler demanded Klaipeda. The Lithuanians had little choice and, on 22 March 1939,
signed a treaty ceding the area to Nazi Germany. The country lost 5.1 percent of its
territory, and 6 percent of its population. Lithuania also lost most of its coastline, which
was reduced from 90 to about 20 miles. The loss devastated the economy. The majority
of the nation’s imports and exports went through Klaipeda, which had been Lithuania’s
only important port, and it had been home to many industrial and commercial concerns.21
The German theft of Klaipeda also robbed the small Lithuanian Navy of its only
modern base. One hour before the Kriegsmarine, led by the pocket battleship
Deutschland, arrived to take over the area, the Prezydentas Smetona, the six boats of the
Coast Watch, as well as some merchant ships, sailed. The six Coast Watch vessels went
to Sventoji, the only remaining Lithuanian harbor. This small harbor was too shallow for
the Prezydentas Smetona, even though it only drew 6 feet of water. The ship remained at
sea off the harbor mouth for four months, riding at anchor, or cruising during bad
weather, and refueling in Liepāja or Riga. In May 1939, after some debate, the
Lithuanians voted 40,000,000 lits to develop Sventoji into a modern port and made an
unsuccessful attempt to obtain a British loan for the completion of the project.22
One British official commented that the absence of a harbor placed the Prezydentas
Smetona in the same position as the legendary ‘Flying Dutchman’; it had to remain at sea.
In the summer of 1939, Lithuania approached the Latvian government about the
possibility of the vessel docking in Liepāja. The Latvians refused on the grounds that it
was a warship. Lacking any alternative, the Lithuanians removed the ship’s armament.
The Latvians then allowed the ship, with a ten-man skeleton crew, to be laid up in
Liepāja. The Lithuanians also asked to attach one officer and five men to the Latvian
Navy for training. Again, the Latvians refused. By June 1939, Latvian dredgers had
deepened Sventoji enough to allow the Prezydentas Smetona and some of the smaller
merchant vessels to return to a Lithuanian port.23
On 10 October 1939, the Soviet Union forced Lithuania to sign a 15-year mutual
assistance pact that granted the Soviets the rights to land and air bases in Lithuania. In
return, Lithuania received the Vilnius region that the USSR had recently taken from
Poland. In May 1940, the Soviet Union complained about Lithuanian ‘provocations’. In
June, the Lithuanian Foreign Minister in Moscow received an ultimatum that included the
formation of a Lithuanian government sympathetic to Moscow. Soviet occupation
quickly followed and Lithuania ceased to exist as an independent nation for the next 50
years. The few vessels of its Navy passed into Soviet hands.24
POLAND
The signing of the contracts for the minelayer Gryf marked the end of a period of French
dominance over Polish naval orders. But the French hardly knew this at the time. Later,
when the Poles decided to expand their submarine and destroyer flotillas, the French
proved as interested as ever. The French position though, had been severely weakened by
Piłsudski’s 1931 decision to conduct a foreign policy more independent of France.25 The
elimination of the military and naval missions was part of this.
Poland’s tense relations with Germany resulted in additional money for naval
expansion from a previously unrealized source. In 1930, Gottfried Treviranus, a member
of the cabinet of the German Chancellor Heinrich Brüning, made a fiery speech in which
he denounced the status of Germany’s eastern frontier and demanded revision. Polish
organizations responded with demonstrations and a campaign of public subscription
dedicated to raising enough money to build a submarine that would be christened The
Answer to Treviranus. By the middle of 1935, a sum equivalent to £200,000 had been
gathered, permitting the Polish government to order a submarine from the Dutch builder
Koninklijke Maatschappij de Schelde. The navy ordered a second boat as well, paying for
it from its budget allowances. The fund-raising effort for the submarine marked the
beginning of a campaign of public subscription for naval building in Poland, a program
that also planned the construction of 17 MTBs, one for each of Poland’s provinces.26
The effort to raise funds for one submarine had resulted in the Poles ordering two
boats, and for a short time the navy entertained hopes of ordering a third. Though a Dutch
firm eventually had received the contract, this decision was by no means a foregone
conclusion. In addition to the Dutch company, the Poles also discussed the matter with
two British firms, Vickers and Cammel Laird. French firms also pushed to be involved in
the competition, as did Italian builders. The French managed to earn a place in the
contest, but the Italians did not.27
The affair became a complicated one because of Poland’s desire to obtain the plans of
foreign submarines so they could build similar boats in their own yards at Gdynia. Many
influential Poles also wanted to see the vessel built and the League now hoped to name
the vessel after Marshal Piłsudski, Poland’s leader and hero having recently died. In their
efforts to build the submarine, the navy benefited from the assistance of what in their case
was an unusual ally: the Polish Army, which also wanted the boat built to honor the late
marshal. The Poles broached the idea of buying plans with Augustin-Normand, as well as
at least one British firm.28
Laroche, the French Ambassador, discussed giving plans to the Poles with Józef Beck,
Poland’s Foreign Minister. Laroche warned that the French Navy would certainly oppose
such a deal. The General Staff would also likely find it distasteful because doing so
would give away French defense secrets.29
Unfortunately for the Poles, the development of their yards in Gdynia had not
advanced enough to permit the construction of submarines. Admiral Swirski and others in
the Polish Navy also entertained hopes that the new Polish submarines could be
assembled in Gdynia from parts manufactured abroad, just as the Finns had done in
Turku, the builders also furnishing Warsaw with the plans. The inadequacy of the Polish
yards made this a pipe dream. The solution was ordering completed vessels from a
foreign firm.30
While the Poles examined the offers from the various builders, the French decided that
the order for the submarines would surely pass to a British company. This fear, typical of
French observers, derived from the economic grip that Britain and its dominions
potentially exerted over Poland due to the agricultural products that Poland exported to
nations within the Commonwealth. Despite what for the French seemed an obvious point
of leverage in the quest for the contracts, the British firms approached the potential deal
with wariness and trembling, their fears arising from concerns over Poland’s ability to
pay for the new craft. Only Vickers pursued the matter enthusiastically, even though they
were uncomfortable concluding a contract, especially in light of the payment conditions
that the firm Samuel White of Cowes had made in regard to two new destroyers the Poles
wanted. Samuel White allowed the Poles to pay for the destroyers in installments spread
over a five-year period.31
By November 1935 the French had changed their minds and were certain that the
contracts for the new submarines would indeed go to the Dutch; only the negotiations
over the extent of Holland’s economic concessions prevented an earlier completion of the
deal. This did not stop the interested French firms from trying to recapture the Polish
market. Capitaine de corvette (reserve) Picot, a representative of Chantiers de la Loire,
journeyed to Warsaw with this in mind. Chantiers de la Loire intended to come to an
understanding with Augustin-Normand in order to cooperate in the pursuit of the
submarine orders, an apparent bowing of the industrialists to the Foreign Ministry’s
preferred business approach. Ambassador Laroche told the Poles that giving the order to
France would show the value that Warsaw attached to the French alliance.32 Arguably,
Laroche proved correct.
In January 1936, with the decision to order the submarines from the Netherlands all
but finalized, Normand made a last-ditch effort to land the contracts. Fenaux, Normand’s
director, journeyed to Warsaw to meet with Admiral Swirski. Fenaux knew that the
submarines would be built with Dutch plans, and that the Poles also intended to use
Dutch designs in any future naval construction. Fenaux insisted that French firms had
more experience, especially Normand, and that the French companies would be willing to
build the boats according to the Dutch-supplied plans. Fenaux’s effort failed. He should
not have been surprised. The poor quality of the other warships that the Poles had
purchased in France, coupled with Normand’s price being 8 percent higher than that of
their Dutch competitor, made Fenaux’s failure virtually a foregone conclusion.33 But,
Fenaux’s visit was not an utter waste of time. Warsaw would remember his offer to build
vessels based on Dutch plans.
In return for signing the contract with the Dutch firm, the Poles received significant
commercial compensation in cereals. The Poles paid about 8,200,000 złotys per boat,
over a five-year period, the largest amounts to be tendered in the last year. The Poles
supplied some of the material for the vessels, such as the electric motors and batteries.
They also contracted with the Swiss firm Sulzer for the diesel engines, a deal for which
the Poles also received economic compensation, and a factor that played an important
role in many of their naval orders. Neither of the boats received the name Piłsudski.
Instead, they were christened Orzeł (Eagle) and Sep (Vulture), the Orzeł being purchased
with the subscription funds.34
The mid-1930s also saw Poland purchase two fine destroyers from Britain. Several
British firms competed for the contract: Thornycroft, Vickers, Yarrow, and Samuel
White. The latter eventually won the order, but only after an extended period of
negotiation and its competitors departing the fight. Thornycroft refused to accept
Poland’s terms as the basis of a contract and found itself eliminated. Yarrow retreated
from the fray, as did Vickers. All three feared Poland’s payment conditions. The
representatives of Yarrow also disliked one of the design requirements for the 2,000-ton
vessels that Poland later discarded as impractical: the installation of a catapult for a
seaplane. Price certainly played a role in the final decision, with Samuel White offering
its wares for much less than the Poles could obtain in France.35
The contracts for the destroyers and their equipment would take on a truly
international air. The British firm Samuel White won the bid to build the two warships,
Błyskawica (Lightning), and Grom (Thunder), but a French firm provided the torpedoes
and launching tubes, and Sperry, a US corporation, supplied the fire-fighting equipment.
The Poles ordered the destroyers on 29 March 1935. Samuel White laid the keels that
fall. When the ships entered service they were first-rate vessels, far in advance of other
destroyers of the day.36
By the mid-1930s, the Poles, including the deals arranged in the 1920s, had purchased
or signed contracts for warships built in Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, and
the Netherlands, and also built vessels in their own yards at Gdynia and Modlin. The
destroyers, submarines, and a few of the smaller vessels counted torpedoes among their
armament, and generally, the contracts concluded for warships did not include the
torpedoes themselves. They were purchased from other firms, usually French and British.
By the 1930s the Poles faced the logistical dilemma of having their navy equipped with
several types and calibers of these vital weapons. The planned acquisition of a number of
torpedo-carrying seaplanes for the Navy provided an added wrinkle.37
In early 1935, out of a desire to adopt a single model, the Polish Navy began
examining the problem of multiple torpedo types. Current Polish vessels used 550 mm
and 450 mm torpedoes, and the Poles wished to adopt the 533 mm device because of its
interchangeability between destroyers and submarines. Moreover, it was a caliber used by
many foreign navies, giving the Poles the flexibility of purchasing weapons from a
number of suppliers. Commander Czernicki, of the Polish Navy’s Technical Service, who
was later murdered at Katyn, supported the change, though he feared being unable to
change the caliber of the tubes on the new destroyers.38
The French, as always, were eager to land the contracts, and the Poles proved willing
to give the French every opportunity. The Polish Navy was unhappy with the quality of
French warships, but they had been more than pleased with French torpedoes, particularly
those of La Société des Torpilles de Saint-Tropez. From July 1934 to January 1936, the
French firm received no less than four requests from the Poles regarding the prices and
dimensions of 450 mm, 533 mm, and 550 mm torpedoes. A Norwegian concern also
made an unsuccessful bid for the contract.39
Despite allowing the Poles two years to pay for the weapons, the Saint-Tropez based
firm failed to win the order and it went to a British company. As was often the case
during the interwar period, the price of French goods destroyed their chances. The French
firm initially set a price 25 percent above that of their British competitor. A last-minute
adjustment in its bid did nothing to further the French cause as the Poles judged it an
action taken too late. The Poles never succeeded in making the change to a uniform size
and the new vessels of the Navy were delivered with 550 mm torpedo tubes.40
Laroche regretted that the order went to a British firm, especially since it was one he
viewed as fairly easy for the French to capture. The event led him to remark: ‘As the
British Consul said recently, England now holds Poland’, a situation the Frenchman
believed the British would use to their profit.41
As foreign firms competed for the latest Polish naval contracts, the political situation
in Europe became more fluid and unstable. In 1936, Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland
and introduced conscription as part of his plan to rearm Germany. This spurred increased
military expenditure among Germany’s neighbors and, in this same year, Poland adopted
a six-year rearmament program that provided for the modernization of its armed forces.
Poland hoped to achieve much of this effort through the creation of internal armament
industries in central Poland, far from the borders of both Germany and the Soviet Union.
The war began before the plan was completed.42
The Polish Navy hoped to benefit from this drive to increase the nation’s armaments.
In 1936–37, the Polish media reported that the navy’s expansion program, the ‘maximum
plan’, called for the construction of two 25,000-ton battleships at a cost of about
70,000,000 złotys each, as well as two heavy cruisers. Later reports insisted that the navy
had a plan for the 1938–39 fiscal year that was even larger and included the completion
over a ten-year period of three battleships of 25,000 tons, one aircraft carrier-cruiser
hybrid of 6,000 tons, 122,000-ton destroyers, 12600-ton torpedo boats, 12 small torpedo
boats, 12500-ton submarines, three 1,000-ton minelaying submarines, six 1,100 ton
submarines, one minelayer, and 16 minesweepers of from 150 to 200 tons. Such a force
would have provided Poland with a navy comparable to that of any of its neighbors, and
would have indeed been an amazing force for a nation with only 90 miles of coastline.43
This was a fantasy fleet, and in more ways than one. Admiral Swirski later wrote that
the Polish Navy did not really have a building plan that contained large ships, but that
these reports appeared when Poland informed the Disarmament Commission at the
League of Nations that Poland wanted to expand its navy to just such lofty levels. The
Poles did this for tactical reasons,44 but toward what end is unclear. Perhaps by insisting
upon so much the Poles planned to bargain away in their discussions with the League
Disarmament Commission everything that they did not really want.
There were, though, a number of groups in Poland that lobbied for a large navy; one of
the most important was the Colonial and Maritime League, an organization that also
pushed for Polish colonies in Africa. Individuals, such as Julian Ginsbert, who wrote on
behalf of the Navy, used Swirski’s ‘maximum plan’ for domestic propaganda. A 1938
issue of Gazeta Polska insisted that the Polish Navy should be comparable in strength to
that of Germany in the same manner as Germany’s navy was to Great Britain’s. That
would have meant the construction of a Polish fleet about one-third the size of the
Kriegsmarine.45
Probably in 1938, General Bortnowski, the head of the armed forces inspectorate,
nominated a commission to consider a shipbuilding program proposed by the Naval
Command Staff. The commission recommended completion of a slightly altered version
of a navy program, if it could be done with the funds then available. Shortly, the navy
received funding to build two destroyers and two submarines. Before the outbreak of the
war, the Polish government concluded contracts for the construction of two destroyers,
two submarines, two minesweepers, a pair of 300-ton minesweepers and seven MTBs.
Poland planned to build two of the latter from funds raised by public subscription.46
The Poles ordered a few of the new ships from native yards that had begun functioning
at Gdynia. On 5 January 1939, the Polish Navy contracted for two destroyers of the Grom
class from the naval workshops in Gdynia. Only the keels had been laid before the
outbreak of the war. Poland’s yards at Gdynia and Modlin also completed four
minesweepers in the late 1930s.47
Some foreign firms benefited from the new Polish naval building. Samuel White
received the contracts for the two MTBs financed by funds raised from private
contributions, while Augustin-Normand and Chantiers de la Loire, despite the past poor
performance of French builders, each received an order for a Polish submarine based
upon the plans of the Dutch-designed Orzeł class. The Poles ordered the boats in 1938
and construction began the following year. The war prevented their completion.48
The Polish submarine order for France can be directly attributed to the Rambouillet
accords signed by Poland and France on 6 September 1936. The agreement, which Paris
saw as a means of strengthening the Franco-Polish alliance, granted a French credit to
Poland of 800,000,000 francs, which the Poles were to use for the purchase of armaments
and other expenditures related to national defense. Before the outbreak of the war, French
industry proved able to deliver only a fraction of the material the Poles desired, and none
of the warships.49
Lastly, the development of the Polish naval air arm must receive some attention. The
Poles formed their first naval aviation unit at Puck on 1 July 1920. In the months that
followed the unit slowly acquired a collection of former German land- and sea-based
aircraft. In 1921, the Poles officially created a naval aviation unit of the Polish Navy.50
In May 1922, the naval unit became part of the Polish Air Force, an organizational
relationship that continued until the unit once again became part of the navy in 1929. In
1923, the naval aviation unit received seven Italian-built Macchi M.9 single-engine flying
boats. These were the first of a number of foreign-built aircraft the Poles bought for their
naval air arm. French-made planes figured prominently in the purchases and Warsaw
acquired a number of Lioré et Olivier (LeO) seaplanes, as well as several aircraft
manufactured by Latham.51
In 1929, when the naval aviation unit came back under navy control, the Poles began
constructing naval aircraft domestically. By 1932, Polish industry was building several
types of seaplanes and flying boats that were generally powered by Hispano-Suiza or
Lorraine engines. The navy also made an unsuccessful attempt to purchase a Polish-built
torpedo bomber, the R-XXA. Unfortunately for the Poles, the bankruptcy of the
manufacturer, E.Plage & T. Laskiewicz of Lublin, added to their woes. The Polish
government had forced the navy to do business with this builder, despite Admiral
Swirski’s desire to import foreign aircraft. The deal cost the Poles three years of naval air
force development and 2,000,000 złotys, for a prototype that was not airworthy.52
After this failure, the Poles once again looked to Italy. On 30 July 1938, the Poles
signed a contract for six Cant Z.506B floatplane torpedo bombers, the funding for which
Admiral Swirski had managed to push through. The first arrived at Puck on 27 August
1939, the only one of the six to make it before the war began. Two other types of Polish-
built aircraft were ordered in 1939, but none reached Polish naval air units before the
German invasion. On 1 September 1939, some 300 Polish naval aviators and crewmen
had at their disposal 28 or 29 sea- and land-based aircraft.53
CONCLUSIONS
By the late 1930s the market for warship sales in the Baltic was beginning to dry up. This
may seem contradictory in the face of the orders that the various nations attempted to
place in French and British yards immediately before and shortly after the start of the
war, but one must remember that the majority of these orders resulted from the belief in
the imminence of war, or as a result of the conflict itself. Many of these deals would not
have happened but for the threat of aggression from Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
Driving the evaporation of the market was a regional development of domestic
shipbuilding industries to a level sufficient for native construction. By the late 1930s, the
Finns had assembled their own submarines and armored ships, and also built some of
their own torpedo boats; the Poles had laid the keels for destroyer-sized hulls in their
yards at Gdynia and constructed some smaller vessels. The Estonians and Latvians built
their own small warships, while Lithuania began building patrol boats. Moreover,
through the use of public subscription, the Poles and Estonians had discovered an
innovative means of public finance. This allowed them, in a small way, to escape the
shackles of foreign financing, which normally came from French or British banks, and
often proved difficult to obtain and had distasteful terms. The warship export market in
the Baltic was well on its way to disappearing when the Germans invaded Poland in
September 1939. In the successor states, two decades of economic development and
government investment had finally begun to pay dividends in the form of productive
internal industries, the fruits of which, in the case of all but Finland, would be enjoyed by
a conqueror.
NOTES
1. Wihtol, ‘La pensée navale finlandaise’, pp. 231–2; Conway’s 1922–46, pp. 363–7.
2. William J.Stover, Military Politics in Finland: The Development of Governmental Control
Over the Armed Forces (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1981), p. 141;
Jackson, Finland, p. 179; Kirby, Baltic World, p. 322; Anssi Vuorenmaa, ‘Finland’s Defence
Forces: The Years of Construction 1918–1939’, Revue Internationale d’Histoire Militaire 62
(1985), 39–54.
3. Troubridge Diaries, 19 Aug. 1937; Swett, 1 June 1925, file MID 2775–3, PBS, roll 10;
Goodden to WO, 31 Mar. 1924, ‘Reports and Letters’, IWM; Henderson to Simon, 4 Jan.
1935, FO 371/19434.
4. Jackson, Finland, p. 179.
5. Ibid.; Baltic Times, 26 Feb. 1938; Stover, Military Politics, p. 161. The figures vary in the
sources.
6. Admiralty to FO, 25 Dec. 1939, FO 371/23646.
7. Wyatt-Smith to FO, 27 Dec. 1939, FO 371/23646; Carol Morris Petillo, Douglas MacArthur:
The Philippine Years (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1981), pp. 155, 170.
8. Wyatt-Smith to FO, 27 Dec. 1939, and Coote, FO minute, 29 Dec. [1929], FO 371/23646.
9. Interview with Munters and Berkis, 19 May 1937, FO 371/21061; s.i., Minister of Commerce
and Industry to MAE, 15 Feb. 1935, AMAE, Lettonie 61; Edgars Andersons, Latvijas
Brunotie Speki Un to Prieksvesture. Armed Forces of Latvia and Their Historical
Background (Daugavas: Vanagu Apgads, 1983).
10. Admiralty to FO, 3 June 1937, Collier to Alberts, 15 June 1937, Eden to Inskip, 17 June
1937, and Baltic States: Annual Report, 1936, 11 Feb. 1937, FO 371/21060.
11. Arzur to MM, 30 June 1937, SHM, 1BB7 132 Pologne.
12. Ibid.
13. Meister, ‘Den lettiska flottan’, p. 301.
14. Andersons, ‘Die militärische Situation’, pp. 131, 134; Anderson, The Baltic Entente’, p.
134; Anderson, Latvia Past and Present, pp. 48, 449–50.
15. Lecureul to MAE, 30 May 1933, and French Minister Estonia to MAE, 9 Dec. 1935,
AMAE, Estonie 58.
16. Gallienne to FO, 2 and 25 Jan. 1939, and Estonia: Annual Report, 1938, 7 Jan. 1938, FO
371/23605; Great Britain, Parliament, House of Commons, Parliamentary Debates, House of
Commons Reports (London, 1944-), 345 HC Deb. 5 S., pp. 980–4, 333 HC Deb. 5 S., pp.
695–701, 343 HC Deb. 5 S., p. 970, 334 HC Deb. 5 S., p. 331, and 333 HC Deb. 5 S., pp.
2187–190.
17. Gallienne to Orde, 22 Sept. 1938, and FO minute, 30 Sept. and 1 Oct. [1938], FO
371/22654; Estonia: Annual Report, 1938, 7 Jan. 1939, FO 371/23605; letter from
Commodore Erik Wihtol to the author, 26 June 1996; Jill Edwards, The British Government
and the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939 (London: Macmillan, 1979), pp. 40–5, 53–4.
18. Conway’s 1922–1946, pp. 352–3; Gallienne to Halifax, 1 Mar. 1940, FO 371/24760.
19. Baltic Times, 29 Feb., 7 Mar., and 9 May 1940.
20. Vennin, BIM No. 4, 1 Apr. 1924, SHM, 1BB7 129 Lettonie; military attaché, 20 Aug. 1937,
file MID 2737–18, and Swett, 1 Mar. 1925, file MID 2775–3, PBS, roll 10; Goodden to WO,
1 Mar. 1924, ‘Reports and Letters’, IWM; Ronald L. Tarnstrom, Poland and the Baltic
Republics (Lindsborg, KN: Trogen Books, 1990), p. 154.
21. Chase, Lithuania, pp. 293–4; Lithuania, Annual Report, Economic (A) for 1938, 3 May
1939, FO 371/23606.
22. Meister, ‘Litauischen Marine’, p. 771; Vale to British Legation, ‘Report on visits to Papes
(Latvia), Sventa (Lithuania), Palanga (Lithuania)’ (hereafter ‘Vale Report’), 8 May 1939,
E.H.B.[?] to Preston, 10 Feb. 1939, and Rustat Blake to Collier, 21 June 1939, FO
371/23606.
23. ‘Vale Report’, 8 May 1939, and military attaché to Orde, 1 June 1939, FO 371/23606;
Meister, ‘Litauischen Marine’, p. 771.
24. Chase, Lithuania, p. 296; Meister, ‘Litauischen Marine’, pp. 771–2; Conway’s 1922–1946,
p. 354.
25. Ahmann, ‘Soviet and German Approaches’, p. 210.
26. Wandycz, Twilight, pp. 178–9; Conway’s 1922–46, p. 347.
27. Attaché Naval, 20 Mar. 1935, SHM, 1BB7 132 Pologne.
28. Attaché Naval, 4 July 1935, ibid.
29. Laroche to MAE, 11 Mar. 1935, AMAE, Pologne 316.
30. See Note 28.
31. Ibid.
32. Attaché Naval, 13 Nov. 1935, and Laroche to MAE, 7 Nov. 1935, AMAE, Pologne 316.
33. Attaché Naval, 16 Jan. 1936, AMAE, Pologne 316.
34. Ibid., and Gruillot, 12 Jan. 1938, SHM, 1BB7 132 Pologne; Conway’s 1922–46, p. 350;
Przemyslaw Budzbon, ‘I Somergibili “Classe Orzel”, Orgoglio della Marina Polacca (1939–
1969)’, Revista Maritima 123 (March 1990), 86–7.
35. Attaché Naval, 22 Nov., and 9 and 23 Jan. 1935, SHM, 1BB7 132 Pologne; Cambon to
Laval, 23 Apr. 1935, AMAE, Pologne 316.
36. Attaché Naval, 9 Jan. 1935, SHM, 1BB7 132 Pologne; Conway’s 1922–46, pp. 347, 349.
The Blyskawica is now a museum ship in Gdynia.
37. Attaché Naval, 6 Feb. 1935, SHM, 1BB7 132 Pologne.
38. Ibid.; Peszke, Poland’s Navy, p. 33.
39. See Note 37.
40. Attaché Naval, 6 Feb. and 14 Mar. 1935, SHM, 1BB7 132 Pologne; Conway’s 1922–46, pp.
349–50.
41. Laroche to MAE, 8 Mar. 1935, AMAE, Pologne 316.

42. Conway’s 1922–46, p. 347.
43. Attaché Naval, 21 Dec. 1936, and L’Ouést-Éclair, cited in 23 Mar. 1937, SHM, 1BB7 132
Pologne; Siegfried Breyer, Battleships and Battle Cruisers, 1905–1970, trans. Alfred Kurti
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1973), p. 459. Breyer’s figures differ slightly from those of
the archives.
44. Swirski, ‘Plany’, MAR AII 7/7, PISM, Swirski Papers.
45. Berliner Tagblatt, 16 Dec. 1937, and Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, 26 Feb. 1938, cited in
SHM, 1BB7 132 Pologne; Swirski, ‘Plany’, MAR AII 7/7, PISM, Swirski Papers.
46. See Note 44; Conway’s 1922–46, p. 347.
47. Conway’s 1922–46, pp. 349, 351.
48. Ibid., pp. 350–1.
49. Wandycz, Twilight, p. 446; Jean-Baptiste Duroselle, La Decadence, 1932–1939 (Paris:
Imprimerie Nationale, 1979), p. 522; Officier de liaison Marine report no. 8, May 1939,
SHM, 1BB7 132 Pologne.
50. Jerzy B.Cynk, History of the Polish Air Force, 1918–1968 (Reading: Osprey Publishing,
1972), pp. 115–16.
51. Ibid., 117–19; Poland: Annual Report, 1926, 3 Oct. 1927, FO 371/12580.
52. Cynk, Polish Air Force, pp. 118–19; Swirski, ‘Plany’, MAR AII 7/7, PISM, Swirski Papers.
53. Cynk, Polish Air Force, pp. 119–20; Gruillot to MM, 31 Aug. 1939, SHM, 1BB7 132
Pologne; Swirski, MAR AII 7/7 ‘Plany’, PISM, Swirski Papers.
9
The British Naval Treaties and British
Abandonment, 1935–39
When Hitler came to power in 1933, Britain had begun to enjoy an economic recovery.
British trade interest in the Baltic region remained strong, though some Foreign Office
officials believed British firms often did not grasp the opportunities the region offered.
Throughout the 1930s the Northern Department of the Foreign Office campaigned,
unsuccessfully, for Britain to take a larger role in Baltic commerce, arguing that British
influence in Poland should be strengthened before the opportunity was lost to Germany
and the Soviet Union. The Baltic States wanted the increased trade as much as Britain,
and hoped that its expansion might prevent them from becoming overly dependent upon
Germany.1
German rearmament and ambitions presented a much greater threat than economic
penetration. Worst of all, the British would terribly misread Berlin’s new regime. Indeed,
‘the most serious mistake was failing to appreciate the extent of Nazi ambitions in
Eastern Europe, and the degree to which even moderate expansion would strengthen
Germany’s strategic position’. The British never seriously considered using force to halt
Germany’s rearmament, though Churchill later argued that they should have. And no
French or British leader contemplated a preventive war, at least not in the early stages of
Hitler’s rule.2 But the former Entente powers needed to do something, and the new
German policies provoked great changes in Britain and France. Both, albeit slowly,
began to rearm.
As do all countries in such a situation, the British encountered difficulties. A lack of
defense spending since the end of the Great War had resulted in the erosion of the native
British armaments industry. This made rearmament more expensive than it might have
been otherwise. British rearmament began in November 1934 with the establishment of
the Defence Requirements Committee (DRC). During the formation of this agency,
Germany withdrew from the Geneva Armaments Conference and announced its intention
to leave the League of Nations. The job of the DRC was to examine defense needs and
make recommendations. It advised naval building and diplomacy directed at Japan, a 52
squadron RAF to counter Germany, and a small army expeditionary force for use on the
Continent. Sir Neville Chamberlain, Chancellor of the Exchequer, did not believe the
proposal fully addressed the potential German threat. He pushed for air equality with
Germany, especially in bombers. The idea of air parity became one of the foundation
stones of British rearmament and lasted until 1937.3
Overall, Chamberlain advised air force and army expansion at the expense of the navy.
He believed that Britain could not prepare for war with both Japan and Germany, and the
Royal Navy was building with a Far Eastern conflict in mind. Chamberlain wanted to
The british naval treaties and british 143
concentrate on the defense of the British Isles. Obviously, ‘[t]he Admiralty was incensed
by these proposals’.4
But what the Admiralty wanted did not matter as much as they thought. Chamberlain
was more powerful than the sailors. Indeed, from 1934 to 1939, no British minister
exercised greater influence over Britain’s defense policy.5 Chamberlain, though
exercising power, could not get his recommendations approved by the Defence
Requirements Committee (DRC), at least not initially. In November 1935, the DRC put
forward the ‘Ideal Scheme’. This proposed a rearmament plan to be completed by the end
of the decade that included a two-power standard for the navy, and expansion of the
RAF, as well as a continental force for the Army.6
These proposals did not last either. Chamberlain believed that the greatest danger to
Britain was the air threat from Nazi Germany. At the time, he was one of the few senior
British officials who saw Germany as Britain’s most dangerous potential enemy, and, in
his mind, British security in Europe took precedence over Far Eastern concerns. Driven
by fear of possible Nazi bombing, the Cabinet came to agree. And with this, the
government began to view the RAF as Britain’s first line of defense. The focus of
rearmament began shifting to air defense, placing the Royal Navy second in regards to
funding.7 This marked an historic change in British policy: the Royal Navy was no longer
Britain’s first protective line.
Obviously, the change in policy, as well as Chamberlain’s intervention, did not please
the Royal Navy. But Hitler’s coming to power had not immediately upset British naval
leaders. They saw Japan as the major threat, not Germany. In 1931, Japanese aggression
in Manchuria had resulted in the March 1932 repeal of the ‘Ten Year Rule’. On the heels
of the Japanese invasion came a rumor of a planned Japanese attack on Singapore. None
of this resulted in new naval spending and warship construction dropped by a quarter
during the 1929–34 period, hitting its interwar bottom in 1932.8
Other factors fed Admiralty worries. Failure to reach an agreement with France at the
1930 London Naval Conference contributed to British fears that other states would build
to match French naval expansion. And France planned to build, particularly its submarine
force. To the Admiralty, this could mean construction in order to maintain the ‘Two-
Power Standard’. In October 1933, at the Geneva Armaments Conference, the British
agreed to Germany’s right to equality in armaments. The Admiralty struggled against
Foreign Office opinion that German violations of the naval clauses of Versailles, and
violations of Versailles in general, did not threaten British security. Also critical to the
navy was Japan’s August 1934 abandonment of the 1922 Washington Treaties and the
1930 London Naval Agreement. The Japanese then embarked upon a building program,
seeking parity with the United States and Great Britain.9
After 1933, the Admiralty now had two potential enemies: Germany and Japan. Later,
Italy would be added to the list. The Navy believed a war against two powers ‘posed
potentially insurmountable problems’, and pushed the government for more defense
spending and to reach a political settlement that would leave Britain with fewer
opponents. The navy leadership wanted a deal with either Japan or Germany, and no
further League of Nations military commitments that might force Britain to fight in a
place where it had no real interests. By late 1934, the Admiralty concluded that it had to
come to terms with Germany on naval rearmament and to limit the size of the
Kriegsmarine in order to meet potential and combined threats from Europe and the Far
East.10
THE ANGLO-GERMAN NAVAL AGREEMENT
In January 1935, the Admiralty and the Foreign Office, quietly and unofficially, asked the
Germans what they would want in the way of a naval building program, as well as the
steps they might take toward participation in a naval conference. This marked a great
shift in Admiralty policy. During the 1920s the Royal Navy had opposed naval limits, but
now they sought safety in them. The admirals concluded that they had two choices:
massive rearmament, which was not yet possible politically, or limits on foreign navies.
The Second London Naval Conference, held in 1935, was directed at the pursuit of the
second option, as well as reaching an accommodation with Germany. Moreover, the
Second London Conference was necessary because the Washington Accords, as well as
the 1930 naval agreements, were due to expire in 1936.11
The Germans proved responsive to Britain’s wooing and Hitler opened the subject of
an Anglo-German naval agreement in November 1934. Hitler wanted agreement to a
German fleet 35 percent of that of Great Britain’s, which meant a German Navy of
400,000 tons. Conversations followed, with the Foreign Office harboring the hope of
moderating Hitler’s view, an illusion the Admiralty did not share. Hitler refused to bend
and the Admiralty finally concluded that ‘any agreement with Germany was better than
no agreement at all’. The Navy feared German abrogation of Versailles, and a subsequent
decision to build to parity with Britain, and hoped to seize the proffered opportunity
before Hitler withdrew it. Growing knowledge of Germany’s cheating on the Versailles
settlement also motivated them toward an accord,12 though how knowledge of a nation’s
violation of an agreement pushes one to enter into further arrangements with them is a
great mystery.
Sir John Simon, the Foreign Secretary, with Anthony Eden, went to Berlin and met
with Hitler on 25 March 1935. They broached the subject of naval armaments, having in
mind a general conference on the issue. Hitler had no interest in a naval conference, but
did not oppose a bilateral agreement, though he refused to accept less than parity with
France and Italy. Formal negotiations began in London on 4 June 1935 and the British
government reached an agreement by 18 June, under much pressure from the Admiralty
to do so. The Anglo-German Naval Agreement (AGNA) allowed the Nazis to build to 35
percent of the Royal Navy tonnage in surface ships, and 45 percent in submarines.
Germany also received the right to build to 100 percent in submarines, if the tonnage
required for this construction came from other classes of ships.13
The AGNA meant that the Admiralty had become a driving force behind what became
the British diplomatic strategy of appeasing Germany. The navy supported this in an
effort to prevent the naval build-up of a potential enemy in order to ensure that they had
sufficient naval forces to meet threats in the Far East. The treaty also unilaterally revised
the Versailles naval clauses by allowing the German fleet to build to three times what
Versailles had permitted.14 In reality, though, it meant even more than this: the agreement
killed Versailles. And killing Versailles upset the Continent’s balance of power,
particularly in Eastern Europe, destroying one of the goals that Britain had pursued since
the end of the First World War.
The AGNA delivered a serious blow to British prestige. The nations of the Baltic
generally regarded it as a British surrender of the area to Nazi Germany. The clauses
granting Germany parity in submarines came as an especially surprising development to
the ministers of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. These three nations regarded the treaty as
a volte face in British policy toward the region. The AGNA also destroyed the faith of the
Scandinavian states in British intervention and German war planning for the region now
assumed no British interference.15
The fact that the ministers of the three Baltic States were shocked by the submarine
clauses is understandable. But why did the Admiralty not only allow the submarine
clauses, but push for their inclusion? Their support of this element of the treaty was a
result of a bad assessment on their part regarding the future threat of submarines. The
Royal Navy believed that the development of asdic, as well as the use of the convoy
system, meant that submarines no longer had their First World War effectiveness. These
factors, combined with a belief that the Germans had very limited submarine-building
capacity, meant that Germany could not mount a commerce war against Great Britain.
Any German threat would come from surface raiders.16
It was foolish of the Admiralty to believe either of these things. Betting one’s security
on an unproven technology is always risky. Moreover, they knew very well that the
Germans had been building submarines and their components since 1920.17 Finland had
given them ample example of German submarine construction, as had other German not-
so-secret work in Spain and Turkey. Moreover, British Naval Intelligence monitored U-
Boat construction, primarily because it was so obviously an anti-British weapon. After
1933, they gathered reams of information on German submarine development, but the
Royal Navy simply refused to believe it.18 The Admiralty’s correct assessment that Hitler
did not plan to build a navy to compete with Britain, at least in 1935,19 explains their
decision, but does not excuse them. If Germany was perceived as a threat, why did they
make it easier for them to rearm? The agreement was a flawed one, and even before its
signature Sir John Simon made this quite clear when he pointed out that granting
Germany a 35 percent ratio would surely encourage France, and therefore Italy, to build
their fleets, which would throw off Britain’s estimates of foreign naval strength.20 This
was exactly what happened.
FRANCE AND THE ANGLO-GERMAN NAVAL AGREEMENT
The conclusion of the AGNA shocked France. The French felt betrayed and the day of its
signature falling on the anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo could have produced only
added bitterness. Naval relations between Britain and France had consistently been tense
between the wars. The British had continuously pressured the French to come to terms
with Italy in naval matters, as well as to restrict their own naval building. The British
naval leadership hated French naval growth and did all they could to control it. The
French Navy viewed this as British arrogance. Moreover, the French Navy relied on the
Versailles Treaty to keep Germany’s Navy limited to 108,000 tons. But now the Germans
had escaped Versailles’ grip, throwing France into a disadvantageous position vis-à-vis
Germany and Italy. It also meant the death of France’s ‘Two-Power Standard’ naval
strategy against Germany and Italy. The French could not hope to build to a level that
would match the future combined forces of these two powers.21
The French also viewed the treaty as a shift in British policy ‘from France towards
Germany’. The French warned Britain that the agreement would provoke a naval race in
Europe and lead to more French naval construction. Robert Craigie of the Foreign Office,
and Sir Ernle Chatfield, the First Sea Lord, insisted that the agreement served French
interests. The French concluded that British policy was ‘based on a series of illusions’.22
By signing the Treaty with Germany, Great Britain got two things it had been trying to
prevent since the end of the First World War: expansion of the French and Italian navies.
Strategically, the AGNA was disastrous for the nations of the Baltic. Between the
wars, German war planning dictated that the Navy’s role was to gain control of the Baltic
Sea. The British played right into Germany’s strategy and handed the Nazis de facto
dominance of the Baltic. Moreover, the AGNA gave Germany parity with France.
Germany building to 35 percent of the British fleet equated to the 1.75 ratio that the
Washington Accords allotted France. It also secured Germany’s flank and undermined
France’s commitment to Poland, or any other potential ally, such as the Soviet Union, by
effectively preventing a French naval penetration of the Baltic.23 By the late 1930s
though, air power, and especially dive-bombers and air-launched torpedoes, were
beginning to make such an expedition far too dangerous to mount.
For the Poles, the AGNA meant a great weakening of their strategic position since it
encouraged the creation of a naval force in Germany strong enough to prevent the
shipment of foreign reinforcements and war material to Poland in the event of a Polish-
German clash. The Polish newspaper Kurjer Warszaski claimed that the accord was
‘more dangerous for us than for others, it gives a free hand to the German Navy in the
Baltic’. Only the Finns greeted it with a measure of satisfaction, their feelings being
based upon Finland’s fear of the Soviet Union and a knowledge that increased German
naval strength acted as a weight against Soviet power.24
Despite the obvious destruction that the treaty wrought upon French war planning, one
French official saw an opportunity. The French Naval Minister, François Piétri, was
determined to end the Washington building restrictions and had attacked the treaty in two
ways. First, he insisted that any violation of the Versailles naval clauses would knock the
feet from under the Washington agreements. Second, he pushed to have the Geneva
Disarmament Conference’s promise to grant Germany equality in land armaments
extended to the German Navy. He believed that this would destroy the Washington ratio
system, with the result being that Britain, Japan, and the United States would have to
disarm to France’s level, or allow France to build to theirs.25
Piétri’s reasoning was as ludicrous as that of his British counterparts pushing for the
AGNA. Encouraging German naval rearmament directly attacked French naval strategy
for a future war, allowed Germany to become the dominant naval power in the Baltic,
and undermined the security of the cordon states.
THE ANGLO-SCANDINAVIAN AND ANGLO-POLISH NAVAL

AGREEMENTS
While the AGNA is famous, or perhaps infamous, what is not so well known are the
naval agreements that Great Britain pursued in the late 1930s with the other nations
bordering the Baltic Sea. Before the close of the decade, Britain concluded naval arms
limitation treaties with every nation bordering the Baltic Sea except the poorest and least
powerful: Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. After concluding the AGNA, Britain turned to
the Scandinavian states, nations that had consistently demonstrated an interest in
disarmament in the years since the end of the Great War. The British pursued such a
policy ‘in the interests of naval limitation’.26 Moreover, this fitted in quite well with
Britain’s other efforts to prop up its eroding naval superiority.
Negotiations for the limitation of naval forces began between Great Britain, Sweden,
Norway, Finland, and Denmark in September 1936. The terms of the new measure,
which was based upon the provisions of the 1936 London Naval Treaty, raised only a few
objections from the smaller powers. The primary point of contention revolved around the
provisions pertaining to capital ships and cruisers. The 1936 London Naval Treaty
prohibited the construction of capital ships displacing from 10,000 to 17,500 tons and this
category’s mounting of a main gun of more than 10 inches. The Treaty also forbade the
construction of cruisers displacing over 8,000 tons with guns larger than 6.1 inches. The
Scandinavian nations opposed these provisions because they prevented them building the
type of armored coastal defense vessels that constituted the mainstays of their respective
naval forces.27
Realizing the concerns of the Scandinavians, Great Britain agreed to include a clause
that allowed for the construction or acquisition of a number of such vessels for each of
the Scandinavian states. Each vessel would be limited to 8,000 tons, and its top speed
restricted to 25 knots. The size of the main guns was also limited. Britain wanted these
parameters so that the ships could not be classified as cruisers and therefore break the
ongoing ‘cruiser holiday’.28
In November 1937, the Swedish government informed Sir Robert Craigie of the
Foreign Office of their intention to conclude the naval agreement, but the Swedes had
one reservation. Because of the number of sub-category ‘a’ cruisers (heavy cruisers)
being constructed by the Soviet Union, the Swedes claimed that it might be difficult to
agree to any speed limitations for their coastal defense vessels. Moreover, the Swedes
said that it might also prove necessary for them to increase the caliber of the guns on their
warships.29
At the beginning of 1938, Craigie met once again with the representatives of Sweden,
Norway, Denmark, and Finland. Their respective governments were prepared to resume
negotiation of the naval treaty. Additionally, they brought what all hoped would be a
solution to the coastal defense ship problem. The Scandinavian formula limited neither
the number of future coastal defense vessels, nor their speed. Craigie pointed out that
under this plan the Scandinavian nations would be allowed to build as many sub-category
‘a’ cruisers as they liked. The British then suggested that the question of the definition of
coastal defense vessels be disposed of by negotiations through diplomatic channels.30
The parties eventually reached an agreement and concluded the treaty in December
1938. It followed the provisions of the 1936 Treaty except that each of the Scandinavian
states was allowed to build 24,000 tons of sub-category ‘a’ cruisers. The construction of
vessels in this class had been forbidden under the terms of the London agreement.31
The Anglo-Scandinavian Treaty limited the displacement of capital ships to 45,000
tons, aircraft carriers to 23,000 tons, submarines to 2,000 tons, and light surface vessels
to 8,000 tons. If the signatories felt threatened, upon providing notification of their
actions to the other treaty adherents, the nation could build light vessels of up to 10,000
tons. This clause also carried the aforementioned provision that allowed the Scandinavian
nations to construct 24,000 tons of 8,000-ton warships, which meant, of course, that each
could build up to three of the coastal defense vessels that comprised the core of their
naval forces.32
When building or modifying a warship, the signatories were expected to notify the
other powers within the first four months of the calendar year. There were also provisions
limiting the acquisition of warships from other nations and articles forbidding the sale of
ships that could be utilized by other nations as vessels of war,33 thus the accords had the
ring of the 1922 Washington Treaties.
The agreement, which was supposed to remain in force until 31 December 1942, also
included a provision that allowed the temporary suspension of the Treaty in wartime if
any signatory felt that its security was threatened. The parties planned to meet in the last
quarter of 1940 to negotiate the renewal of the treaty, but of course the war prevented
this.34
While pursuing talks with the Scandinavian states, the British also sought to sign
similar treaties with Poland and the Soviet Union. The Poles had few disagreements with
the terms of the 1936 Naval Treaty and Warsaw only objected to having to provide
notification to signatory states regarding new construction of vessels under 2,500 tons.
The Poles also wanted it made clear that they would be under no obligation to refrain
from new construction during the period after the treaty’s expiration in 1942 and the
signature of a new accord.35
THE ANGLO-SOVIET NAVAL AGREEMENT
Britain’s naval treaty negotiations with the Soviet Union began on 20 May 1937. The
conclusion of an Anglo-Soviet Naval Treaty rested upon Britain signing a similar new
measure with Germany. Obtaining Berlin’s consent to the demands of the Soviet Union
resulted in further British naval concessions to Germany. Notably, Germany gained the
right not to notify Britain regarding the construction of minor warships unless the Soviet
Union followed such a policy. Germany also won British consent to lay down, when it
wished, two cruisers foreseen under the AGNA. The former agreement had stipulated the
date when Germany could undertake this construction.36
In 1937, Great Britain and the USSR concluded the Anglo-Soviet Naval Agreement
and the same year the British signed a similar treaty with Germany. In 1938 Britain
reached a like accord with Mussolini’s Italy. Some British officials hoped that the
conclusion of bilateral agreements of this type would demonstrate to the world that ‘a
large measure of agreement already exists in the matter of naval limitation’. The British
believed that this would lay the groundwork for a general international treaty on naval
limitation formulated under League of Nations auspices.37
FINLAND AND BRITAIN’S FEARS
The conclusion of the naval limitation treaties with the nations on the Baltic littoral
represented the final act in the British abandonment of the Baltic Sea to German
dominance and influence. Many in the British government feared this and believed that as
a consequence Finland would be drawn into Germany’s political orbit. This did not
occur. Pro-German elements did indeed exist within Finnish governmental and military
circles, just as these same elements existed in similar areas of British life. The cultural
ties between Finland and Germany were certainly stronger than those between Finland
and Great Britain, but these did not translate into German influence significant enough to
tie Finland to Germany. It is indeed true that Finland participated in the Second World
War on the side of Nazi Germany, but its participation derived more from a hatred and
fear of the Soviet Union than from any love for the Nazis.
Studies of German-Finnish relations in the 1930s conclusively demonstrate that
British fears were indeed unfounded. There was much gratitude in Finland for German
intervention in the Finnish Civil War, but diplomatic relations were severed between
Finland and Germany late in 1918 after the Finns began to orient their foreign policy in
the direction of the Entente. Finland’s first leaders, General Mannerheim, President
Ståhlberg, and Foreign Minister Holsti, all pursued pro-Entente policies and harbored
suspicions of Germany, as well as the Soviet Union. Relations between Finland and
Germany suffered additional blows in 1922 and 1926, respectively, when the Germans
signed the Rapallo and Berlin agreements with the Soviet Union. Commercial agreements
during this period smoothed some of the tensions.38
After 1933, relations between Germany and Finland did not improve. The advent of
Nazism actually drove Finland further from the German grasp. Nazi Germany attempted
to pursue a policy of cultivating relations with Finland, particularly in the economic
sphere. But Nazism itself made the fulfillment of this policy more difficult. Moreover,
Hitler came to power in Germany after Finland’s own flavor of fascism had been largely
discredited, and the political right in Finland was in a general decline.39
Relations between Finland and Germany worsened as the Nazi regime continued. The
time of the Munich Crisis found the majority of Finns not just anti-Nazi, but anti-German
as well. By 1939, alienation defined the relations between the two states. Germany
attempted to restore relations, but failed. Later that same year, German policy toward
Finland undertook a complete volte-face with the signature of the Molotov-Ribbentrop
Pact. With this, Germany agreed to the Soviet Union’s desire to destroy Finland’s
independence. Moreover, during the course of Stalin’s Winter War with the Finns,
Germany helped partially blockade Finland as a favor to the Soviet Union.40
During the period of growing international tension in the late 1930s, the Soviet press
accused Finland of encouraging the ambitions of the German Navy in the Gulf of
Finland, a statement with a blaring ring of truth considering the arrangements the Finns
made to build submarines with the Germans, and to let the Nazis train on the boats.
Captain N.C.Moore, the British Naval Advisor in Finland, commented that the Soviet
Union had no cause for complaint. He also reported that Finnish naval officers were
much more interested in the developments in the Royal Navy than those in Hitler’s
evolving force. He also believed that as a group the naval officers were not pro-German.
Moore did comment that one of the higher officers of the Finnish Navy was suspected of
‘improper relations with German officials’. Possibly this was an allusion to Commodore
Schwank, who was thought to be somewhat corrupt, and also had a reputation as strongly
pro-German. Moore could find no other examples that might prove Soviet accusations of
Finnish collusion with Nazi Germany or British fears of substantial pro-German
tendencies in Finland, though if he had known more about the submarine program he
might have changed his mind. By this time, however, Bartenbach and the other German
experts had left. Obviously, in Moore’s opinion, pro-German feelings did not exist
among the majority of Finnish naval officers.41
Finnish naval cooperation with Germany seems to contradict Moore’s assessment, but
the Finns pursued their military relations with the Germans out of self-interest, not from a
desire to further Germany’s foreign policy or military ambitions. The Finns knew what
they wanted and Germany offered the best path for getting it.
The general opinion among British diplomats of growing pro-German influence in
Finland prompted a return visit to Finland by General Kirke in 1939. British officials did
not believe that pro-German feelings equated to anti-British sentiment and felt that
overall, the members of the Finnish government, as well as the Finnish people, generally
liked Great Britain. But, they also believed that the Finns were ‘apt to think that we
cannot be bothered with a small country like theirs’. It was hoped that the return of
General Kirke on a visit, one for which the Finns had been asking for quite some time,
would help alleviate these perceived Finnish fears.42
General Kirke returned to Finland for two weeks in early summer 1939. In a report on
his trip he encapsulated Finnish feelings toward Germany in one succinct statement:
‘They do not want anything to do with Germany but, rather than accept a Russian
guarantee, they would join the Axis.’ Fear of the Soviet Union motivated Finland above
most other factors. Throughout the 1930s, Finland had maintained a policy of neutrality,
but the Second World War would force them to change this. General Kirke reported that
Germany was working to establish friendly relations with Finland, and that visits between
the diplomats of the two states were encouraged and well received. But, the conclusion of
his report revealed that the Finns were ‘very anxious to be friends with Great Britain’.43
Indeed, perhaps Finland’s desire to convey just such a message accounts for their
eagerness for a return visit by General Kirke.
Finland though, harbored hopes regarding Great Britain that would bring them
nothing. The various naval treaties were the culmination of a British policy of strategic
surrender that dated to the early 1920s. This shines through despite the dispatch of
General Kirke’s mission, which would seem a policy aberration if not for the economic
motivations behind it. In April 1926, the Foreign Office circulated a memorandum that
outlined Great Britain’s global security interests. The Baltic did not make the list of the
13 most important regions, despite the lives, money, and effort Great Britain had
expended in the region immediately following the conclusion of the First World War.
This report clearly demonstrates the lack of British interest in the security of the area,
though they did have a desire for regional economic dominance. In regard to
Scandinavia, Poland, and the Baltic States, the report says that ‘Of these countries little
need be said. Our general aim here as elsewhere is peace and stability.’ A different
paragraph reveals in succinct terms the British attitude to the Baltic States. The British
felt that other than fulfilling any obligations that League of Nations membership required
them to undertake, Great Britain ‘should not feel called upon to object to any change such
as the federation of the Baltic States, or their reabsorption by Russia’. If the leadership of
the Baltic States had been fully aware of the true feelings of the Foreign Office, this
would surely have had far-reaching ramifications for British influence and economic
penetration in the region. Moreover, the Baltic does not appear in the revised list
published the following April of the most important foreign policy commitments of the
British Empire.44
CONCLUSIONS
A critical development during the post-1933 period was British abandonment of the
Baltic region to German and Soviet domination. The Anglo-German Naval Agreement
signaled it. This accord, as well as the other British naval treaties, were motivated by
Britain’s desire to limit or control naval building in other states as a means of propping
up its own eroding naval superiority. But these agreements were made at the expense of
other nations that depended, rightly or wrongly, on the naval support of Great Britain,
and the naval weakness of Germany. The agreements, especially the AGNA, undermined
Britain’s influence in the region and weakened the political and military positions of the
nations of the cordon sanitaire.
It is not surprising that France was stunned by the AGNA. After all, why would
Britain countenance naval building by an obviously revisionist power, yet spend nearly
two decades seeking to limit similar building by its most likely ally? Moreover, why
would Great Britain agree to allow this new building when it had a treaty binding that
nation’s navy to an inferior status? Before 1935, could anything else have seemed more
ridiculous? Granting Germany the legal right to build its navy out of a fear that Germany
would build its navy was an example of the same irrationality that drove French leaders
to fear an attaque brusqué from a German Army that did not exist. Functionally, the
AGNA meant that Britain surrendered one of the aims for which it had fought the First
World War: the destruction of the German Navy.
Moreover, it is amazing that the British worried so much about French submarine
development during the interwar years, but not about German development of the same
vessels prior to 1933. With the AGNA, Britain not only ensured that the Germans would
build a submarine fleet, but that the French would expand theirs. An increase in French
building though, would only be temporary. Soon, the money for naval development
began to dry up as the French government began funding other, more pressing defense
concerns.
Germany’s freedom to build a navy now meant that the British needed more ships.
The Admiralty’s push for a two-power standard after October 1935 was solely due to the
expansion of the German Navy. Between 1936 and 1938, the Royal Navy used the
government’s fears of German rearmament to obtain the naval building it did receive.
Before the AGNA, the British had a comfortable superiority over the combined fleets of
Germany and Japan. After the AGNA, this superiority eroded. New Admiralty
construction replaced older ships, but the result would be that by 1939, the Royal Navy
would be inferior numerically in battleships to the combined German and Japanese
fleets.45 The great weakness of the AGNA was that it gave away British naval superiority
when the British had the ability to keep this position. Moreover, it forced Britain to build
more capital ships. These resources would have been better used for the construction of
smaller, but desperately needed escort vessels, or for other rearmament programs.
The Admiralty leadership knew that Hitler’s offer of a naval agreement was an attempt
to buy the friendship of Great Britain. But buyers expect something in return, and the
Admiralty was equally aware that Germany’s price was for Britain to look the other way
as the Nazi regime expanded in Eastern Europe.46 And in many respects, that was exactly
what happened, at least until 1939.
NOTES
1. D.C.Watt, Too Serious a Business: European Armed Forces and the Approach of the Second
World War (New York: Norton, 1975), p. 97; Kaiser, Economic Diplomacy, pp. 91–4.
2. Bell, Royal Navy, p. 105; Dilks, ‘The Unnecessary War’, pp. 106–7.
3. Bond and Murray, ‘The British Armed Forces’, p. 103; Smith, ‘Rearmament and Deterrence’,
pp. 314–15.
5. Dilks, ‘The Unnecessary War’, p. 108.
6. Bell, Royal Navy, p. 103; Sean Greenwood, ‘“Caligula’s Horse” Revisited: Sir Thomas Inskip
as Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence, 1936–1939’, Journal of Strategic Studies 2
(June 1994), 24; Smith, ‘Rearmament and Deterrence’, p. 321.
7. Dilks, ‘The Unnecessary War’, pp. 109–11; Bell, Royal Navy, p. 103.
8. Bell, Royal Navy, p. 99; Clare M.Scammel, ‘The Royal Navy and the Strategic Origins of the
Anglo-German Naval Agreement’, Journal of Strategic Studies 2 (June 1997), 98–9.
9. Scammel, ‘The Royal Navy’, pp. 98, 100–1, 105.
10. Bell, Royal Navy, p. 109; Scammel, ‘Royal Navy’, p. 105.
11. Scammel, ‘Royal Navy’, p. 105.
12. Gibbs, Grand Strategy, p. 155; Scammel, ‘Royal Navy’, pp. 106–7.
13. Scammel, ‘Royal Navy’, pp. 109–10; Gibbs, Grand Strategy, pp. 157–8, 160–3.
14. Gordon, ‘The Admiralty and Imperial Overstretch’, p. 70; Scammel, ‘Royal Navy’, p. 92.
15. Mieczyslaw Nurek, ‘Great Britain and the Baltic in the Last Months of the War’, in John
Hiden and Thomas Lane (eds), The Baltic and the Outbreak of the Second World War
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 22; Bond, ‘British War Planning for
Operations in the Baltic’, p. 123.
16. Scammel, ‘Royal Navy’, p. 110; Bell, Royal Navy, pp. 106, 114.
17. Saville, ‘The Development of the German U-Boat Arm’, pp. 37–40.
18. Wesley K.Wark, ‘Baltic Myths and Submarine Bogeys: British Naval Intelligence and Nazi
Germany 1933–1939’, Journal of Strategic Studies 6 (June 1983), 66.
20. Gibbs, Grand Strategy, p. 158.
21. Jackson, ‘Naval Policy’, pp. 136–7, 144–5; William Gregory Perret, ‘French Naval Policy
and Foreign Affairs, 1930–1939’ (PhD diss., Stanford University, 1977), pp. 173–203, 454;
Doughty, ‘The French Armed Forces’, pp. 48–9.
22. Scammel, ‘Royal Navy’, p. 110; Jackson, ‘Naval Policy’, p. 144.
23. Saville, ‘The Development of the German U-Boat Arm’, pp. 482–3, 546.
24. Baginski, Poland’s Freedom of the Sea, p. 48; Collier, FO minute, 8 July 1935, and Grant
Watson to Hoare, 22 July 1935, FO 371/19438; Noël to Laval, 2 July 1935, AMAE, Pologne
316.
26. FO minute, 20 Dec. 1938, FO 371/21357.
27. Holman, FO memorandum, 4 Mar. 1937, FO 371/20657.
28. Ibid.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid.
31. FO minute, 20 Dec. 1938, FO 371/21537.
32. Text of the Anglo-Scandinavian Naval Agreement, FO 371/21537.
33. Ibid.
34. Ibid.
35. ‘Memorandum on present position of naval negotiations’, 5 May 1937, FO 371/20647.
36. Holman, FO minute, FO 371/20657.
37. Jozef Goldblat, Agreements for Arms Control: A Critical Survey, Stockholm International
Peace Research Institute (London: Taylor & Francis, 1982), pp. 3–4; ‘Memorandum on
present position of naval negotiations’, 5 May 1937, FO 371/20647.
38. Backlund, ‘Nazi Germany and Finland’, pp. 14–15.
39. Ibid., pp. 1–2.
40. Ibid., pp. 2, 5; Packer, 17 Dec. 1939, file 760D.62/12, United States, Department of State,
Records of the Department of State Relating to Political Relations Between Finland and
Other States, 1910–1944 (Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Service, 1974,
microfilm) (hereafter PRF), roll 3; ‘Document File Note’, file 760d.61/169, Schoenfeld, 8
Dec. 1939, 760d.62/49, and Cross Reference File Note, file 760d.61/682, ibid.
41. Grant Watson to Hoare, 1 Aug. 1935, FO 371/19434.
42. Halifax to Hore-Belisha, 26 May 1939, FO 371/23648; Kirke, ‘Autobiographical Sketch’,
pp. 32–3, file 26, LHC, Kirke Papers.
43. Kirke, ‘Autobiographical Sketch’, pp. 32–3, file 26, LHC, Kirke Papers; ‘Notes by General
Kirke on His Visit to Finland, June 1939’, 26 June 1939, FO 371/2364; Max Jacobson,
Finnish Neutrality: A Study of Finnish Foreign Policy Since the Second World War (New
York and Washington, DC: Praeger, 1968), P. 7.
44. ‘Memorandum on the Foreign Policy of His Majesty’s Government, with a List of British
Commitments in their Relative Order of Importance’, n.d., 10 Apr. 1926, DBFP, ser. 1A,
Vol. 1, pp. 846, 865–6, 880; ‘Memorandum respecting the Foreign Policy of His Majesty’s
Government, with a List of British Commitments in their relative order of importance
(revised and brought up to date April 1927)’, ibid., Vol. 3, pp. 786–802.
45. Bell, Royal Navy, pp. 27–8, 39, 45.
46. Ibid., 103.
10
Grand Strategy and Failure
‘I do not envy the leaders of those days to whom history
presented a choice of Hitler, Stalin, and death, each choice
not necessarily excluding the other two.’
Tomas Venclova1
In a 3 February 1936 memorandum, Foreign Office Permanent Undersecretary Sir Robert

Vansittart wrote that the Versailles system was dead. He made this comment after the
failure of a second round of talks on an Eastern European security pact. Vansittart said
‘the brief day when it was possible to believe that in Central Europe German influence
could be effectively countered by that of France, Italy, or Britain is past’. For this
situation he blamed ‘France’s negative attitude’ and the ‘inflexibility of the Eastern states
on border issues’, as well as Britain’s failure to make an ‘honest attempt’ to revive the
Versailles settlement. Moreover, he was critical of France and its inability to reach some
type of agreement with Germany.2
In some respects, Vansittart was correct. Versailles was indeed dead, and with it the
possibility that the states of the cordon sanitaire would continue to enjoy a peaceful
existence. But did the symptoms Vansittart identified kill the Treaty?
FRANCE, GERMANY, AND BRITAIN
During the interwar years, Britain’s leaders commonly believed that the continued
tensions between Germany and France were a result of France’s unwillingness to come to
terms with the Germans. But this was not quite the case. Millerand’s 1920 government
embarked upon a policy of rapprochement toward France. The French sought
cooperation with Germany as a means of meeting France’s economic and security
concerns. Millerand’s policy assumed, incorrectly, that Germany would abide by the
provisions of Versailles, and was broken upon this stone. After the signature of the
Locarno Treaty in 1925, Aristide Briand also tried, unsuccessfully, to work with
Germany.3
In 1935, Prime Minister Pierre Laval, believing, probably incorrectly, that France
could not compete with German rearmament because of the economic depression it had
just entered, sought an accommodation with the Nazi regime. This effort also failed, and
for the same reason: Germany did not want to be ‘accommodated’.4 Here was the basic
problem with trying to reach an agreement with Germany. Whether it was during the
Weimar regime, or under Hitler, German foreign policy objectives remained revisionist
in regard to the Versailles settlement. One cannot reach an amicable agreement with a
Grand strategy and failure 155
nation that does not want to conclude one. Or, in other words, you cannot successfully
appease a nation that does not want to be appeased.
Vansittart did at least acknowledge some British blame for the collapse of the
Versailles settlement. But Britain’s refusal to commit itself to France, and its
unwillingness to clearly support the security of Eastern Europe, left France alone to face
Germany.5 The Dawes and Young Plans, the Geneva agreement on German equality of
armaments, and finally the AGNA, all contributed in some manner to the weakening of
the Versailles settlement upon which rested the security of Eastern Europe, France, and
also Great Britain.
THE SMALL STATES
Vansittart was largely correct regarding the border problems of the Eastern states, of
which there were many. Polish territorial ambitions generated most of the difficulties and
the Poles managed to alienate every nation with which they shared a frontier. The Polish
seizure of Vilna is well known, and the diplomatic situation created by the technical state
of war that continued between Lithuania and Poland until March 1938 proved the major
stumbling block in the formation of a Baltic League. Moreover, Germany and the Soviet
Union invariably supported Lithuania in an effort to forestall any penetration of Polish
influence into the Baltic States. Because of the seizure of Vilna the Lithuanians refused to
collaborate with Poland in any circumstance, even as a means of improving their own
threatened security. German and Soviet actions combined with nationalistic feelings in
Poland and Lithuania, as well as national stubbornness on the part of both nations, to
prevent a solution to the problem.6
Lithuania’s international relations also hindered closer cooperation between Estonia
and Latvia. Both wanted closer ties with Lithuania, but feared that stronger relations
might draw them into Lithuania’s disputes with Poland and Germany. German
irredentists urged the transfer of Lithuania’s Klaipeda region to Germany, and the advent
of the Nazi regime made this an increasingly dangerous issue. Concerns over Lithuania’s
relations with Poland doubtlessly contributed to Latvia’s 1921 refusal of Lithuania’s
proposal for a military alliance. The Vilna and Klaipeda issues plagued Lithuanian
foreign and domestic policy in the interwar period and affected the conclusion of a
general agreement on cooperative defense among the small states.7
Less well known is Poland’s border dispute with Latvia. In the spring of 1920, the
Poles turned their voracious territorial appetite on the Latvian area of Latgale when
Warsaw’s envoy to Riga made a strong declaration that the area belonged to Poland. He
did not win the area for the Poles, nor prevent the establishment of solid relations
between the two states, but the incident did succeed in creating lasting Latvian mistrust of
Poland. Moreover, it also injured the hopes of Latvia’s military leaders for a Latvian-
Polish military alliance. Poland also desired Teschen, which was part of Czechoslovakia.8
The Poles even put pressure on Czechoslovakia during the Munich Crisis and took part of
the carcass when Hitler occupied the unfortunate state’s remains.
Estonia and Latvia also had territorial disputes to sort out after their respective wars of
independence. Colonel Stephen Tallents, the head of the British diplomatic mission to the
Baltic States in the early 1920s, arbitrated a dispute between Latvia and Estonia over the
town of Valka. Estonia received most of the village, as well as an important railway
junction and the Meierovics Cabinet in Latvia resigned in protest. Though the solution
disappointed many in Latvia, it did not become a stumbling block in Latvian-Estonian
relations. In general, the rivalries and disparate interests of the three Baltic States
prevented their formation of a Baltic Union.9
But by 1936, did these disputes mean, as Vansittart suggested, that Versailles was
dead and, by virtue of this, the status quo in Eastern Europe as well? They undoubtedly
contributed, but other factors did as well.
GRAND STRATEGY, FRANCE, AND FAILURE
On 14 February 1919, Georges Clemenceau proposed to the British that Paris and
London divide the Baltic into spheres of influence as a means of aiding the emerging
states during the dangerous and chaotic postwar period. The participation of the United
States was initially considered, but this provision quickly disappeared and a plan was
advanced allotting support of Finland and the three Baltic States to Great Britain, while
France took care of Poland. The British showed some interest in the scheme and a
financial arrangement followed. The plan was very short lived, foundering on France’s
economic interests and a desire to rid the area of German influence.10 But it demonstrates
the underlying concerns motivating factors of French strategy in the interwar years:
France pursued its economic interests, sought security against Germany, and worked to
undermine German influence. Moreover, France was willing to work with Britain, as
long as this did not prevent France’s pursuit of its economic and security goals.
The cordon states played a mixed role in French grand strategy, serving sometimes as
allies, always as sources of economic strength, and sometimes as both. Poland became
the most important state, especially in France’s alliance building efforts, but France’s
insistence that Poland remain focused on Germany after the new nation’s relations with
the Soviet Union stabilized, interfered with the creation of an effective alliance system
among the Baltic successor states. The military alliance with Poland was specifically
directed against Germany, as were the arrangements with the Little Entente. Poland was
important to France because Paris intended that their relationship with Poland would
force Germany to fight a two-front war. But an agreement in early 1922 for an alliance
between Poland, Finland, Estonia, and Latvia was never ratified because of French fears
that it would make Poland’s orientation more anti-Soviet than anti-German. Other
alliance building efforts with Latvia and Lithuania foundered on Poland’s territorial
ambitions.11
Alliance building remained a critical element of France’s grand strategy through the
interwar years, one that ultimately failed. A number of factors contributed to this:
France’s poor treatment of its allies, the foreign policy decisions of France’s allies
themselves, Germany’s resurgence, and Hitler’s strategy of attacking France’s alliance
system through bilateral agreements.
France’s poor treatment of Poland, particularly France’s efforts to extract as much
from the Poles as possible for military equipment that often proved shoddy, has been
shown. The Romanians and Yugoslavs were treated just as poorly and French
governments also used arms sales to these states as tools of influence and control. But
Germany’s resurgence did even more damage. Romania, with which France had signed
an alliance in 1926, pulled away from France in the late 1930s. A contributing factor was
France’s inability to supply the arms that Romania believed it needed for its defense. The
Great Depression injured France’s armaments industry, weakening France’s ability to
help its allies. Romania turned to Germany in 1936 for its weapons, and, by 1939, had
been driven to neutrality by an awareness that not only could Britain and France not
prevent any German moves southward, but that they also could not supply the arms the
Balkan nations needed for their defense.12
The small states also embarked upon policies, which France could not control, that
injured the French alliance strategy. In 1931, Marshal Piłsudski decided that Poland had
become a ‘Great Power’ and pursued an independent foreign policy. The Poles believed
that France considered its own economic interests more important than Poland itself.
Moreover, in 1931–32 Polish public opinion ‘accused France of financially exploiting
Poland’, adding that France had ‘disowned’ Poland in the pursuit of its relations with the
Soviet Union and Germany. Poland though, misjudged its own strength, and especially its
ability to stand against a Germany guided by leaders who were willing to do publicly
what the Weimar regime only did behind closed doors. Poland also became suspicious of
whether or not France and Britain would support Poland and sought to reach an
understanding with Germany. After the beginning of German rearmament, France
decided that its own security took precedence over foreign policy concerns. By 1934, the
Poles had lost faith in France’s reliability as an ally, and in League of Nations meetings
they began to disassociate themselves from French diplomatic measures. These factors
contributed to the signature of the German-Polish Non-Aggression Pact of January 1934,
which became a major stumbling block to the creation of the broad, Eastern European
defense scheme that France was then trying to negotiate.13
In October 1933, French Foreign Minister Joseph Paul-Boncour put forward an idea
for an eastern security pact that would include France, Germany, the Soviet Union,
Poland, and the nations of the Little Entente. The Soviet Union, fearing that any potential
German attack upon them would come through the Baltic States, insisted upon the
inclusion of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in the agreement, something upon which the
Latvians also insisted.14
In May 1934, Louis Barthou, the new French Foreign Minister in Gaston
Doumergue’s government, put a similar vision to Soviet Foreign Minister Maxim
Litvinov at Geneva. Barthou foresaw a system that included a Franco-Soviet Mutual
Assistance Pact, but one that also encompassed Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, the
Baltic States, and possibly Finland and Romania as well. The system would be basically
an Eastern Locarno. Barthou convinced the initially reticent British to support the scheme
and only Germany and Poland offered resistance. The Finns, Estonians, and Latvians
approached it with understandable trepidation, fearing that the Soviet Union might
interpret the terms ‘mutual assistance’ a bit more loosely than other states. This might
result in the stationing of Soviet troops on foreign soil, i.e., Finland and the Baltic States,
in the event of a crisis.15
One plank of Barthou’s plan was an effort to revise the Franco-Polish Alliance. He
sought to remove France’s obligation to declare war on the Soviet Union if it invaded
Poland. Barthou offered this revision in an attempt to improve France’s relations with
Stalin’s regime. Needless to say, this did not go over well in Warsaw. Moreover, the
Poles also objected to Barthou’s plan for the transit of Soviet troops across Poland to
Czechoslovakia in the event of a German attack on the latter. Lithuania’s inclusion also
irritated the Poles because of the then unresolved issue of Vilna. Finally, Poland feared
that the pact might undermine its recent non-aggression treaty with Germany. The result
was that Warsaw tried to pull the Baltic States, including even the hated Lithuania, into
alignment with Poland and out of the grip of France.16
Negotiations between Poland and Lithuania followed, and for the first time in many
years the two states made significant progress. Poland agreed to grant autonomy to Vilna
and to assist Lithuania’s defense of the Klaipeda (Memel) region. In exchange, the
Lithuanians offered to restore diplomatic relations, open their closed border with Poland,
and if war erupted, cooperate with the Polish military.17
The French reaction was swift and vigorous. Fearing the defection of Lithuania from
the French sponsored pact, the French sent Kaunas assurances that France would support
Lithuanian claims to Vilna against Poland. Stiffened by French promises, the Lithuanians
quickly ended their discussions with the Poles.18
As Hugh Rodgers put it, the French ‘may have interrupted more than they realized’.19
The Poles and the Lithuanians had almost resolved the most serious obstacle to the
creation of a Baltic defense system: the status of Vilna. Considering the military and
political relations that then existed between the various states, the creation of some type
of comprehensive system of military cooperation might have soon followed the
resolution of this sticky dilemma. The foundation for it was certainly strongly laid. The
French effort to satisfy the demand of the Soviet Union for the inclusion of the Baltic
States in the ‘Eastern pact’ undermined the possibility of a broad and inclusive military
arrangement among the states of the Eastern Baltic.20
Even though the Poles hated the original Locarno Pact, and Poland’s Foreign Minister
Józef Beck believed that it encouraged Germany to attack in the east, the Poles had
wanted an Eastern Locarno since 1925. But they, along with Germany, rejected the
proposal in September 1934. Poland saw Soviet participation as too dangerous and
believed that their non-aggression pact with Germany gave them the freedom to pursue
an independent foreign policy. Great Britain ‘promoted the Eastern Pact scheme without
participating in it’. In the end, Barthou’s promising effort died with him when he and
King Alexander of Yugoslavia were assassinated in Marseilles on 9 October 1934.21
Polish foreign policy continued on its own tack. The German-Polish Non-Aggression
Pact greatly pleased the Polish Navy, particularly Admiral Swirski. Swirski believed
Poland had ‘come of age’ and no longer had any need of tutoring. Moreover, the Admiral
insisted that Poland had been freed from having to buy only from French firms, whose
prices had been more ‘onerous’ for the Polish naval budget than those of other
competitors. Poland’s independent streak began to concern the French Navy, the leaders
of which grew concerned about giving their Polish counterparts access to secret
documents. The Foreign Ministry advised that it was ‘indispensable to use some reserve
in communications with the Polish Navy’, but urged that this be done in a manner that
was not so apparent that it harmed France’s desire to encourage relations with the Poles.
By March 1935, French intelligence doubted that the Poles would act if Germany
attacked France.22
Before this period, however, the French seem to have exhibited few doubts about
Polish stoutness and had approached their military commitment to Poland with a certain
amount of seriousness, at least in the early years of the agreement. The French Conseil
Supérieur de la Défense Nationale examined the problems associated with intervening to
assist Poland in the event of a German or Soviet attack. These studies generally centered
upon methods of sending arms and supplies. The French seemed confident in assisting
Poland in the event of it being attacked by the Soviet Union. Less consideration was
given to a potential attack from Germany, but this was due to French military opinion in
the early 1920s, which believed, correctly, that the Germans did not then possess the
military capability to launch a war against Poland.23
The French Navy planned to help the Poles defend themselves, but by the mid-1930s
air power made a French naval penetration of the Baltic an almost certainly fatal act. The
primary f ocus of the war plans for the French Navy involved the protection of men and
materials being shipped to France, and the exertion of pressure on the enemy by attacking
its merchant marine, ports, and coastal installations. Additionally, by 1933 the
Commander-in-Chief of the French Army, General Maurice Gamelin, had concluded that
the French military was incapable of countering both Italy and a rearming Germany, as
well as maintaining its Eastern European commitments.24 Any British naval penetration
would have certainly faced the same difficulties.
After 1936, the Polish government also began to harbor some surprising illusions.
Warsaw’s leaders insisted that Poland suffered from overpopulation and that, as a result,
it needed colonies, as well as to solve its own, self-designated ‘Jewish Problem’. Poland
launched a naval building program with the intention of becoming a maritime power. In
February 1939, General Sosnowski insisted that ‘Poland’s youth were to “play the role
due to Poland”’.25 These attitudes certainly did nothing to help France’s efforts to
strengthen its security.
In the wake of the failure of the Eastern Pact negotiations, France signed assistance
treaties with Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. General Weygand and General
Gamelin recognized the importance of the Soviet Union as a weight against Germany and
after 1932 Weygand sought to break Russo-German cooperation by seeking better
relations with the USSR. But Gamelin, his successor, harbored grave suspicions toward
the Soviets and correctly doubted their sincerity, while many on the French General Staff
believed the Polish military superior to that of the Soviet Union, and therefore more
useful. Daladier resisted conversations with Moscow, fearing that Germany might see
this as part of a French attempt to encircle Germany.26 The obvious question to ask is
this: why did Daladier care if Germany felt it was being encircled? Was this not what
France had been trying to do since 1871? And what it should have been doing
considering Nazi Germany’s obviously revisionist policy?
Paris and Moscow concluded the Franco-Soviet Mutual Assistance Treaty on 2 May
1935. Czechoslovakia signed a similar measure with Moscow. The treaties had strings, as
do most such agreements. The Soviets refused to help Czechoslovakia unless France did
so. The agreements were purely political measures that did little more than provoke
foreign criticism. Hitler used the 1936 ratification of the Franco-Soviet accord as an
excuse to reoccupy the Rhineland, destroying the Locarno system. The Poles hated the
Czechs for their pact with the Soviet Union, and were not pleased with France’s Soviet
agreement either. Afterward, French and Polish diplomacy clearly parted ways and
Poland chose to rely on its non-aggression pact with Germany. France’s refusal to move
against Germany after Hitler reoccupied the Rhineland, even after a Polish offer of
assistance, killed Polish Foreign Minister Beck’s faith in France.27
The Poles, by signing their non-aggression pact with Germany, played into Hitler’s
hands. An element of pre-war Nazi grand strategy was to localize conflicts through
signing bilateral treaties. Hitler aimed at breaking up the League of Nations and the
mutual defense measures of other states, thus isolating them in the face of unilateral
German action. Britain proved very helpful to the Germans in this by promoting German
non-aggression treaties with Czechoslovakia and the Baltic States in 1937–38.28 Up to
September 1939, the German strategy worked perfectly.
Brussel’s actions also helped the Germans achieve their foreign policy goals, and
helped undermine French strategy while doing so. On 6 March 1936, the day before the
Germans marched into the Rhineland, the Belgian government withdrew from its 1920
accord with France. Belgium, in the face of renewed German rearmament, decided that
adopting neutrality would be the best means of preserving its security.29 Nothing could
have been further from the truth.
Belgium’s defection injured French grand strategy. Construction of the Maginot Line
began in 1930, and to Gamelin, its existence gave the French the ability to fight outside
of France in a war pursued jointly with Eastern European powers. If necessary, the war
could even be expanded to Belgium. Gamelin depended upon Italy to provide the route
for an expeditionary force to support France’s Eastern allies. Gamelin also abandoned
previous French plans to fight in the Rhineland and began to see French forces as
supplements to those of the Eastern European states. Allies, particularly Poland and Italy,
were seen as means for France to defeat Germany, but the advent of the Leon Blum
government destroyed any hope of Italian assistance. In 1936, Gamelin tried,
unsuccessfully, to organize a coalition between France, Great Britain, and Belgium, but
nothing came of this.30
Belgium’s defection added to France’s difficulties. To Gamelin, military cooperation
with Belgium had been an indispensable foundation stone of France’s strategy of forward
defense. Fighting the war in Belgium was meant to protect France’s rich, industrial north.
Moreover, Belgium was France’s path for any potential attack against the Ruhr and
Rhineland if Germany launched a war against France’s Eastern European allies.
Belgium’s severing of the accord led France to begin construction of fortifications along
the border with Belgium, something with which Gamelin disagreed. He favored the
strengthening of the Maginot Line’s eastern end, but not its extension, insisting that
mechanization of the army, as well as better weapons and training, were better uses of the
money.31
Belgium’s independent tack did not mean the exclusion of Belgium from Gamelin’s
strategy. Gamelin embarked upon a policy that could be described as ‘soldier-
diplomacy’, where he used his close, personal relationship with the head of the Belgian
Army, General Edouard Van den Bergen, to ensure tight, but clandestine cooperation
with the Belgian Army from 1937 to 1939. But Gamelin did not recast French war
planning, and continued to prepare for war based upon the assumption that if it came,
Brussels would allow the French Army to enter Belgium, thus enabling France to pursue
the strategy of forward defense advocated by Pétain, Weygand, and André Maginot.
Gamelin followed a similar policy of ‘soldier-diplomacy’ with Marshal Edward Smigly-
Rdyz of Poland, and General Miliutin Nedic of Yugoslavia, in an effort to hold France’s
alliance system together. He failed miserably in all three states.32
Gamelin was unsuccessful because he overestimated the political strength of the
military, which was the case in Belgium,33 and forgot that the governing forces, even if
they are soldiers, pursue policies they believe most benefit their own states. Gamelin’s
Belgian gambit clearly demonstrates the risk in basing an important element of a nation’s
defense strategy on the assumption that another nation will do as you wish. Such is often
a problem for large nations when dealing with smaller ones, as the large powers assume
that they can control the smaller, and forget that these states have interests of their own.
GRAND STRATEGY, GREAT BRITAIN, AND FAILURE
While Gamelin searched for ways to shape the French alliances into a useful tool for
French security, the British had yet to do what was necessary to meet the traditional
measure of successful British strategy: maintaining the ‘Balance of Power’ on the
European Continent. The only way to do this was with a direct British commitment to
France. But Britain shrank from this.
London had at last awakened to the German threat and embarked upon rearmament,
albeit reluctantly, as had France. The Royal Navy, though, concentrated on battleships
and cruisers, and not on the light vessels so crucial to anti-submarine work and to
Britain’s eventual wartime survival. British diplomatic strategy continued to remain one
of appeasement, an approach which was supported by the heads of all the ministries
responsible for Britain’s defense, and the Admiralty most of all. The large-scale
construction of bombers played a critical role in this policy between 1934 and 1937, an
activity forlornly intended to convince Hitler to negotiate rather than unilaterally abrogate
the Versailles Treaty. Of course, it failed utterly,34 as such efforts always do.
Great Britain though, did embark upon some initiatives in the 1930s to strengthen
military cooperation between the nations of the eastern Baltic. In late 1933, Colonel
Olenius, a member of the Finnish General Staff, approached Captain Despard, the British
naval advisor to Finland, and suggested the conclusion of an arrangement whereby
Despard would also serve as the naval advisor to Latvia and Estonia. The General Staffs
of these nations already had contacts and Olenius believed the conclusion of such an
arrangement would aid the development of a plan for common defense against the Soviet
Union.35
The initial Foreign Office response was mixed. Many of its officials showed concern
about the reaction of the Soviet Union to a project obviously directed at the communist
state. One Foreign Office official apparently suppressed all arguments against the project
by stating that the hatred of the Comintern for ‘Imperialist England is so rabid that I
doubt whether any misdeeds on our part could possibly fan it’. The Foreign Office
broached the idea with the War Office, the Air Ministry, and of course, the Admiralty,
and none objected. The Admiralty concluded that it was in the interests of Great Britain
‘to make closer naval contact with the Baltic States’. None of Britain’s armed services
opposed helping the Finns, Estonians, and Latvians develop a plan for joint defense.36
After Despard’s initial inquiries on the matter of the extension of his appointment to
the Baltic States, the Finns seem to have lost interest. One Foreign Office official even
speculated that Despard had misled the government. By January 1934, Despard regarded
the entire affair as dead.37 Initially, he received instructions from the Foreign Office to let
drop the issue of expanding his appointment and not to mention it unless asked by the
other governments concerned. The Admiralty still had some interest in the plan and
despite the wishes of the diplomats, ordered Despard to once again raise the question
with the Finns. Despard approached Oksala, the Finnish Defense Minister, who
responded in a ‘non-committal and lukewarm’ manner. Despard received the impression
that nothing more would come of the matter, and his observation proved a correct one.38
From December 1937 to February 1938, the British Cabinet remade its list of strategic
priorities, altering it primarily for financial reasons. Obviously, the defense of the British
Isles was the paramount concern, followed by defense of the main trade routes, protection
of British and Commonwealth territories overseas, and finally, the defense of Britain’s
allies. The Review of Defence Expenditures by Sir Thomas Inskip argued that Britain had
to plan for a long war. Therefore, Britain must conserve its resources until the conflict
began. Inskip urged the abandonment of the idea of parity with Germany on bombers and
concentration on defensive air forces, particularly fighters. In 1938 the Cabinet adopted
Inskip’s recommendations and air defense became Great Britain’s main defense
priority.39 With Britain’s 1938 decision to prosecute a long war that necessitated the
preservation and protection of its strength, London came to the same conclusion that
France had reached in 1919, one for which the French are often ridiculed, particularly by
Americans.
Inskip also insisted that Britain could not prepare for war against three enemies,
Germany, Japan, and Italy, and believed that appeasement would resolve this problem.
When Neville Chamberlain became Prime Minister in 1937, appeasement was seen as the
only way to address the strategic ‘nightmare’ then facing Great Britain. Fearing that war
with Germany might erupt at any time, the Admiralty, as well as all the heads of the
British armed services from 1937 to 1939, including Sir Maurice Hankey, supported
Chamberlain’s appeasement of Germany.40
March 1938 brought the Munich accords, and nothing changed for the British. Captain
Tom Phillips, the Admiralty Director of Plans, wrote: ‘We are therefore of the opinion
that Great Britain should not risk the possibility of war, except in the defense of interests
that are vital to her—which obviously did not include Czechoslovakia.’ Others in
positions of power in Britain felt the same way. All of the British military staffs still
argued against war, and the government’s decision not to fight for Czechoslovakia, was
roundly supported by British officials. Britain’s strategy became ‘buying time’.41
FROM MUNICH TO HEL—FRANCO-BRITISH FAILURE
After Munich, Chamberlain finally came to the realization that Britain had no hope other
than cooperation with France.42 This had been true since the days of the Entente
Cordiale, but the British had refused to see it, and clung desperately to the illusion that
they could remain disengaged from the Continent. They refused to accept permanently
that the world, and indeed their strategic position within it, had changed dramatically
with the rise of an expansionist Germany.
France, for its part, most scholars insist, became after Munich utterly dependent upon
Great Britain for resistance against Germany. Only now did London turn to Paris and
realize that France was vital to Britain’s strategy of fighting a protracted war. Some in
France were not pleased with the emerging spirit of cooperation, particularly in the
French Navy, which after the 1936 Italo-Ethiopian War had to begin basing its war
planning on cooperation with Great Britain, something its leaders found extremely
distasteful. The naval staffs of the two powers began joint planning in 1939.43
The French General Staff proved just as unwilling to support Czechoslovakia as the
British, and refused to fight on the Czechs’ behalf. They had had an opportunity to act
against the Germans in conjunction with their ally, but Gamelin considered any action
hopeless. He bowed under the combined weight of fear of Italy, worries of a Polish
invasion of Czechoslovakia, and Belgian threats to mobilize against France if France
dared to move through Belgium to help its unfortunate ally in Central Europe. The Poles,
for their part, considered Czechoslovakia ‘a doomed state’.44
Munich mortally wounded Czechoslovakia militarily, and the French tried to build a
bloc with Poland, Romania, and Hungary. But they realized that this would not add up to
sufficient weight against Germany and had to look to Great Britain for support. Gamelin
came to believe that only Soviet military aid could help build a successful Eastern
European coalition. France also needed a Soviet alliance, and the French approached the
Soviet Union with General Doumenc’s military mission in August 1939. It was a wasted
effort. The negotiations died on the understandable Polish refusal to allow Soviet troops
to enter Poland, the just as understandable British and French indecision regarding
cooperation with the Soviet Union,45 and Stalin’s opportunism and greed. General
Beaufre, one of the mission’s members, blamed its failure on the Western governments,
‘and perhaps even more on that weakness in decisions and ideas which seemed to
characterise the policies of the western democracies after 1924’.46
After Munich, Hitler stated that he might need to revise the AGNA. This convinced
the British leadership that the agreement had very little life left in it and they reached the
conclusion that Germany would seek to ‘challenge’ Great Britain. In December 1938,
Hitler claimed the 100 percent ratio in submarines allowed under the accord. This
shocked London and, when Britain issued guarantees to Poland, Romania, Greece, and
Turkey in March 1939, Hitler canceled the AGNA.47
Munich showed the Admiralty German ambitions and they embarked upon a program
of building light ships to protect British commerce from potential German raiders. As a
means of speeding rearmament in the late 1930s, the Admiralty insisted that foreign
orders be refused if they interfered with British production needs. If war broke out, the
Royal Navy planned to wage a ‘strategic defensive’. This included an allied blockade that
would allow Britain and France to mobilize their resources and gradually wear down
Germany as they had done during the First World War.48 Obviously, when war finally
came the blockade did not work as well as it had in the Great War, largely because of the
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the subsequent German conquests.
The British military mission that visited Poland in May 1939, ruled out any British
naval activity in the Baltic. In the spring, Churchill advocated, if the nation was at war, a
British naval offensive into the Baltic, as long as the Mediterranean was secure and the
Japanese quiet. Churchill also proposed ‘Operation Catherine’ in September 1939, an
idea for forcing the Kattegat and Skaggerak and operating against the Germans.49
Nothing came of these schemes. German air power and the abundance of mines in the
straits made any British penetration of the Baltic as dangerous as that planned by the
French.
The British government finally agreed to a continental commitment of its army in
February 1939, and also embarked upon a significant expansion of the field force. With
this came Anglo-French staff talks. Cooperation with Britain, combined with the joint
Anglo-French guarantee of Poland, gave Gamelin the opportunity to prosecute the two-
front war that he had always planned. But when the time came, France did not attack, and
did nothing to help the Poles in spite of a May 1939 promise to launch an offensive if
their ally was attacked. The Entente that many in France had hoped for since 1919 had
finally been reached, but resulted in France’s abandonment of its strategy for a two-front
war.50 This also meant the abandonment of Poland, and the other states of the cordon
sanitaire. And on the morning of 1 September 1939, the Germans began the war by
shelling the Polish fortifications on the Hel Peninsula.
CONCLUSIONS
Both France and Great Britain deserve ample shares of criticism for the manner in which
they conducted their affairs in the eastern Baltic in the interwar period. Obviously,
French actions were partially motivated by France’s support of Poland over the issue of
Vilna, as well as a further desire to back the Poles by contributing to Lithuania’s regional
isolation. What makes the French actions even more surprising is that the French
encouraged Latvia to sign an alliance with Poland in January 1923, a measure that would
have contributed greatly to the creation of a comprehensive security scheme.51
The French attitude toward British involvement in the Baltic region is very clear. For
example, a French official reported in September 1924, that the British were working
very hard to form a military alliance between the three Baltic States, a report that was
undoubtedly an incorrect assessment. The French official reported that Major
H.W.C.Lloyd, the British military attaché for the Baltic States and Finland, was pursuing
this course at the behest of the Latvian and Estonian authorities. If a defensive alliance
was signed, the French believed that the British would help in the reorganization of the
armed forces of the three nations, which meant supplying arms to the three states. The
unknown French author cites the German delegation in Kovno as his source. But even
though this report is undoubtedly inaccurate in the information it conveys, it still provides
a most startling revelation in the form of French reaction to a report that Britain was
embarking upon efforts to form a Baltic alliance. The document states that ‘the French
military attaché at Kovno is employ-ing all of his forces to sink the English projects’.
Here, stated plainly, is a clear example of the French government pursuing a policy
designed to weaken the very security system it helped establish. The main reason for this
action: fear of British influence and British economic penetration.52
French policy seems even stranger when one considers the actions of France in the
1930s, though these must be viewed in the light of France’s rapidly weakening economic
and strategic situation. In the 1920s, French diplomats approved of the creation of an
alliance system among the nations of the eastern Baltic, but not if it was to be guided by
British hands, and not if it turned too many of Poland’s military thoughts toward the
Soviet Union instead of Germany. In the long term, French policy hurt France much more
than it helped it. France, though, unlike Great Britain, did not sign agreements that fully
abandoned the region to German and Soviet domination, such as the Anglo-German
Naval Agreement of 1935. But French acquiescence, along with that of Britain to
German occupation of the Rhineland, caused resentment in Estonia and Latvia, even as
Hitler’s move pushed the Baltic powers somewhat closer together. French inaction over
the Rhineland also contributed to Poland’s alienation. By 1939, Germany’s policy of
bilateral agreements had resulted in the neutralization of areas that Britain, as well as
France, needed in order to resist Hitler. Britain’s ‘rediscovery of the strategic importance
of the Baltic states in May 1939 came too late, as did their evocation of the spirit of
collective security in order to create resistance in the Netherlands and Denmark at the
beginning of the phoney [sic] war’.53 Moreover, by 1939, France had become completely
unable to offer the nations of the Eastern Baltic any military assistance.54 The policies
pursued by both Britain and France often proved contradictory, and occasionally, these
powers seem to have had no real policy objective other than national economic
aggrandizement.
In the interwar period the states of the eastern Baltic embarked upon numerous efforts
at collective security. The Estonians proved the most successful at concluding both
binding and non-binding military agreements with their neighbors, including an alliance
with Latvia. The Poles achieved the greatest coup, an alliance with France that provided
for French intervention in the event Poland was attacked. Unfortunately, for all parties
involved, the progress of technology in the late 1930s, as well as the rearmament of
Germany, made all of the agreements tenuous at best. After German rearmament, the
French could not keep their naval commitment to Poland in the event of a war with
Germany without paying a devastating cost. British intervention in the region, even if
they had not already abandoned the area to its more aggressive residents, would have
been just as disastrous. Immediately preceding the outbreak of war, Britain and France
did guarantee Poland. But by this time it was too late.
Piłsudski’s adoption of a very independent foreign policy, combined with the German-
Polish Non-Aggression Pact, and the AGNA, knocked the legs out from under French
plans for Eastern Europe. Gamelin’s pursuit of an alliance strategy became very difficult
in 1931, four years before he became head of the French Army. Diplomatically, the Poles
went back to France in 1939, but by then it was too late, as the French idea of an initially
defensive war, followed much later by a great offensive, had become too ingrained in
French thinking to save Poland in the event of war with Germany. Soviet complicity
made Poland’s survival all but impossible.
In the end, some important questions must be asked. What would have been the result
if France and Britain had more fully encouraged the formation of an alliance including
the Baltic States, Finland, and Poland, one that they strongly supported? What might
cooperation between Britain and France in the creation of a firm system of alliances have
achieved? Would a strong Eastern bloc, one backed by France and Great Britain, have
provided less of a target for Nazi-Soviet partition? Would it have contributed to stability
and prevented the creation of the power vacuum that had developed in the region by the
late 1930s? Perhaps a wholehearted and consistent commitment to the region on the part
of Britain and France would have exerted an influence on Stalin’s purely Machiavellian
August 1939 decision regarding which side he should choose in Europe’s diplomatic and
military struggle.
NOTES
1. Quoted in John Dunn, ‘Polish Defense Planning, 1919–1939: Myth vs. Reality’ (MA thesis,
Florida Atlantic University, 1987), p. 124.
3. Hovi, Alliance de Revers, pp. 120–1; Challener, ‘The French Foreign Office’, pp. 78–9.
5. Ahmann, ‘Soviet and German Approaches’, 246.
6. Debicki, Foreign Policy of Poland, pp. 40–1.
7. Burrows, FO minute, 1 May [1936], FO 371/20308; Collier to Ashton Gwatkin, 31 Jan. 1936,
Collier, FO minute, 3 Feb. 1926, and Wilton to Curzon, 14 May 1921, DBFP, ser. 1, Vol. 25,
pp. 67–70.
8. Hugh I.Rodgers, Search for Security: A Study in Baltic Diplomacy, 1920–1934 (Hamden, CT:
Archon Books, 1975), pp. 10–11; ‘La Baltique en 1937’, SHM, 1BB7 132 Pologne; Dutailly,
Les problèmes, p. 40.
9. Janis Samts, ‘The Origins of Latvian Diplomacy, 1917–1925: The Role of Zigfrids Anna
Meierovics in the Formulation of Latvian Foreign Policy’ (Ph.D. diss., San Jose State
University, 1973), pp. 151–4; Wilton to Curzon, 14 May 1921, DBFP, ser. 1, Vol. 25, pp.
67–70.
10. Hovi, Cordon Sanitaire, pp. 205–9.
11. Hovi, Alliance de Revers, pp. 110, 119, 123–4.
12. Thomas, ‘To Arm an Ally’, pp. 231–3, 243; Hovi, ‘Security before Disarmament’, p. 120.
13. Ahmann, ‘Soviet and German Approaches’, pp. 205–6, 210–12, 246; Robert J. Young, In
Command of France: French Foreign Policy and Military Planning, 1933–1940
(Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1978), pp. 53–5, 64–7, 70–1.
14. Rodgers, Search for Security, p. 98.
15. Young, In Command of France, pp. 67–74; Rodgers, Search for Security, p.99.
16. Young, In Command of France, pp. 70–1; Rodgers, Search for Security, p. 99.
17. Rodgers, Search for Security, p. 99.
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid., pp. 99–100.
21. Ahmann, ‘Soviet and German Approaches’, pp. 213–14; Henry L.Roberts, ‘The Diplomacy
of Colonel Beck’, in Gordon A.Craig and Felix Gilbert (eds), The Diplomats, 1919–1939
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1953), pp. 587–8; Young, In Command of
France, pp. 73–4.
22. Arzur, ‘Note Speciale no. 24’, 26 Mar. 1935, insert in Laroche to Laval, 2 Apr. 1935, and
MAE to MM, stamped 20 Apr. 1935, AMAE, Pologne 316; Dutailly, Les problèmes,, p. 43.
23. Conseil Supérieur de la Défense Nationale report no. 385, 29 June 1922, ‘Transports
éventuels de matériel de guerre à destination de la Pologne et de la Roumanie (Ordre du jour
de la reunion du 5 Juillet 1922)’, and Conseil Supérieur de la Défense Nationale report no.
405, 7 July 1922, ‘Comparison de l’état militaire et naval des diverses puisances pouvant
intervenir dans un conflict européen et conclusions qu’il semble possible d’en tirer’, and
Conseil Supérieur de la Défense Nationale report no. 589, 30 Oct. 1922, ‘Etudes polonais sur
les voies de communication extérieures de la Pologne’, SHM, 1BB8 25.
24. Young, In Command of France, p. 50.
26. Ibid., p. 213; Patrice Buffotot, ‘The French High Command and the Franco-Soviet Alliance
1933–1939’, Journal of Strategic Studies 4 (Dec. 1982), 547, 550–1.
27. Buffotot, The French High Command’, p. 546; Ahmann, ‘Soviet and German Approaches’,
p. 213; Roberts, ‘The Diplomacy of Colonel Beck’, pp. 590, 596–7.
28. Ahmann, ‘German and Soviet Approaches’, pp. 221–2, 228.
29. Martin S.Alexander, ‘In Lieu of Alliance: The French General Staff’s Secret Co-operation
with Neutral Belgium, 1936–1940’, Journal of Strategic Studies 4 (Dec. 1991), 413.
30. Nicole, ‘Maurice Gamelin, Italy and the Eastern Alliances’, 429–33.
31. Alexander, ‘In Lieu of Alliance’, pp. 414–15, 417; Young, ‘La Guerre’, p. 52.
32. Alexander, ‘In Lieu of Alliance’, pp. 414–16, 419–20, 422.
33. Ibid., p. 421.
34. Bond and Murray, ‘The British Armed Forces’, pp. 99–100, 108; Gordon, ‘The Admiralty
and Imperial Overstretch’, p. 67; Smith, ‘Rearmament’, p. 327.
35. Henderson to Collier, 10 Nov. 1933, FO 371/17218.
36. FO minutes, 10 Nov. 1933, FO 371/17218; Boyle to Collier, 29 Dec. 1933, and Shone, FO
minute, 8 Jan. [1934], FO 371/18280; Davidson to Collier, 7 Dec. 1933, and Schwenk to
Collier, 22 Dec. 1933, FO 371/17218.
37. Sperling to Collier, 25 Jan. 1924, and FO minute, 2 Feb. 1934, FO 371/17218.
38. Admiralty to Despard, 9 Mar. 1934, Shone, FO minute, 14 Apr. [1934], and Collier, FO
minute, 19 Apr. [1934], FO 371/17218.
39. Dilks, ‘The Unnecessary War’, p. 122; Smith, ‘Rearmament’, p. 315.
40. Greenwood, ‘Caligula’s Horse’, p. 28; Gordon, ‘Admiralty and Imperial Over-stretch’, pp.
71–2, 74; Bell, Royal Navy, p. 185; Dilks, ‘The Unnecessary War’, p. 119.
41. Gordon, ‘Admiralty and Imperial Overstretch’, p. 74; Dilks, ‘The Unnecessary War’, p. 124.
42. Young, ‘La Guerre’, p. 54.
43. Ibid., pp. 51, 58; Jackson, ‘Naval Policy’, pp. 130–1, 147, 152.
44. Young, ‘La Guerre’, pp. 57–8; Jordan, ‘Gamelin’, p. 436; Roberts, ‘The Diplomacy of
Colonel Beck’, pp. 590–1.
45. Buffotot, ‘The French High Command’, pp. 553–6.
46. Ibid., p. 556.
47. Wark, ‘Baltic Myths’, p. 75; Scammel, The Royal Navy’, p. 111; Gordon, ‘Admiralty and
Imperial Overstretch’, pp. 74–5.
48. Bell, Royal Navy, pp. 105, 113–14, 160.
49. Bond, ‘British War Planning’, pp. 126–7, 129; Smith, ‘Rearmament’, p. 325; Young, ‘La
Guerre’, p. 59; Jordan, ‘Gamelin’, p. 437.
50. Bond and Murray, ‘The British Armed Forces’, pp. 99–100; Jordan, ‘Gamelin’, pp. 437–8.
51. Vaughan to Curzon, 11 Dec. 1923, DBFP, ser. 1, Vol. 23, p. 1036; Vaughan to Curzon, 11
Dec. 1923, DBFP, ser. 1, Vol. 23, p. 1037.
52. ‘Rapport de la Legation Allemande sur les menées anglaises en Lithuania’, 25 Sept. 1924,
SHM, 1BB7131 Pologne.
54. Young, In Command of France, p. 145; G.W.A. [Abbot] to Dept. of State, ‘Confidential
Memorandum on the Baltic Entente’, enclosure in despatch no. 1224, 11 June 1936, file
15129A, C-9-e, box 461, National Archives Record, Group 38.
11
Conclusion
In the period immediately prior to the First World War, Britain and France competed for
the contracts for the Greek and Turkish naval programs, and the influence that would
come with them. Anglo-French rivalry in Greece was particularly intense. The manner in
which the two powers pursued the contracts, as well as the primary motivations which
drove both to seek them, mirrors the period between the world wars: influence and
economics.1 The short era of British and French cooperation during the First World War
is in many respects a political aberration, as both immediately returned to battling one
another as soon as the guns stopped.
Intense Anglo-French rivalry was not restricted to the Baltic littoral states. They
competed for warship orders in Greece,2 and generally fought one another for influence
in the other states of Eastern and Central Europe. Gábor Bátonyi paints a clear picture of
the AngloFrench struggle to gain the upper hand economically in Central Europe, writing
that ‘Anglo-French rivalry, therefore only highlighted the political and economic
divisions in the region and facilitated German expansion in [Central Europe]’. Moreover,
György Ránki draws a similar scene of a France and Britain driven more by economic
interests and the desire to counter the other’s influence, than to construct a firm system of
post-First World War security.3
Something that becomes clearer is the role of the military in the weapons trade. At
first glance, it might seem logical to assume that the military might encourage trading in
arms. Generally, at least in the interwar period, the opposite was often the case. The
Royal Navy proved an almost constant obstacle. Their support of the various naval
treaties signed in the interwar period, as well as their own policy of endorsing an
international ban on submarines, combined with their refusal (sometimes) to give
practical training on warships to foreign officers, clearly demonstrate this point. The
Admiralty only changed its training policy after years of complaints and pressure from
the government and business, as well as an awareness that slow-downs in industry, and
the slackening of their own naval purchases, threatened to put skilled shipyard employees
out of work and push them into other professions. This would undermine the Admiralty’s
security plans, and so encouraged them to revise their policies.
Connected to this is the importance of controlling the position of ‘naval advisor’, or of
having someone serve in this role in a de facto manner. Bartenbach’s position as naval
advisor to Finland trumped the mission of General Kirke and insured that the German-
Dutch company built the subs for Finland. Vennin, France’s naval attaché in Riga, and
Jolivet, the head of the French naval mission in Poland, both played the role of ‘naval
advisor’ and helped corral most of the warship sales for France during their respective
tenures.
The French Navy was willing to become more involved in the arms trade than their
British counterparts. For example, they proved more willing to accept foreign officers for
Conclusion 169
training. But as the examination of the sales to Poland demonstrate, if the French Navy
was forced to devote substantial effort and resources to further a sale, or to overstep the
bounds of what was considered its expertise, it would withdraw from the fight, declare its
neutrality, and leave the matter to the diplomats, salesmen, and bankers. But, on
occasion, if it was in support of an ally, or the navy’s war plans, or if the construction
might provide a vessel that could be requisitioned in the event of war, the navy’s leaders
pushed for the sale. Moreover, French naval attaches and naval officers serving as
military advisors took a very active hand in arranging contracts, much more so than their
British counterparts. But these men, even though they were serving officers, acted as
diplomats and salesmen, and not necessarily as naval officers.
During the interwar period naval leaders dealt with these issues in a variety of ways.
The heads of the German Navy went so far as to subsidize builders. In the late 1930s, the
Soviet Union attempted to buy a battleship and a number of destroyers from American
manufacturers. The US government approved the sale, but the US Navy, more
specifically, Admiral William D.Leahy, the Chief of Naval Operations, fearing the
arrangement’s strategic implications, killed the deal.4
The French government played a very active role in the pursuit of contracts, much
more so than the British. London’s diplomats tended to lobby foreign governments to
accept the bids of specific British firms only when the company directly requested it, a
point that Merja-Liisa Hinkkanen-Lievonen makes clear in her study of British trade in
the Baltic. Whether or not the firm happened to be an arms broker made absolutely no
difference. Apparently, at least to British diplomats, as the old saying goes, ‘business’
was indeed ‘business’.5 Even if British diplomats agreed to intervene, they usually had
limits that they would not cross. French diplomats and officers proved much more
aggressive in pursuing orders. One of the primary tasks of French naval attaches was the
procurement of available arms contracts for French industry. The government supported
their efforts whole-heartedly, possibly even with funds for bribing the necessary people,
and certainly with the awarding of the Legion of Honor to influential government
officials. The direct intervention of the holders of high government offices and efforts at
price-fixing were also not unknown. Indeed, French diplomats preferred that French
businesses joined forces to win orders, and sometimes insisted upon it as the price of
official support with the prospective buyer. The representatives of British corporations
would also stoop to bribery, but Foreign Office officials usually declined to take up such
measures.
What also becomes clear is the gradual erosion of the market for warships in the
eastern Baltic. By the late 1930s, the contracts had begun to dry up, and assuming a
continuing peace, would probably have become even fewer in successive years.
Obviously, the depressed economic situation of the 1930s contributed to this
development. But this was not the greatest reason for the gradual collapse of the market.
The most important factor was that the customers had begun building their own vessels.
They carried out this work at facilities which were inherited from the Tsarist era, or that
they developed in the interwar decades. At the outbreak of the Second World War,
Poland was building destroyer-sized hulls in its yards at Gdynia, Estonia was
constructing torpedo boats at Tallinn, Latvia was building minesweepers in Riga, as were
the Finns in Helsinki, and Lithuania had built patrol boats. The foreign market for naval
arms, the most complicated and most expensive of weapons, was dying in the Eastern
Baltic as state and privately owned industries began to capture this potentially lucrative
segment of the economy. Generally, at least in the period before the Second World War,
small states worked to develop their own internal industries; this relieved them of
dependence upon foreign suppliers and expanded the nation’s economic base. Any
company that relies solely on the sale of arms for its profits will inevitably suffer from
this decision, for at some point, its markets will disappear.
In the end, the British and French invested significant time and money chasing a
market that was eroding. While this was happening, their respective governments
sacrificed the formulation of plans for long-term security for the hope of short-term
economic gain. Economics clearly took precedence over security.
Arms sales were certainly not a cause of the outbreak of the war (the lack of arms
sales is a more likely reason). The gradual dissipation of contracts available to foreign
suppliers clearly indicates this. Since the market was drying up for the most complicated
items, it is reasonable to conclude that it was doing so in less complicated sectors of the
arms market as well. Nations that can build their own warships can generally supply
themselves with their other armament needs. Rarely can a state build modern vessels and
not build its own planes, aircraft, tanks, and other less technically complex items such as
small arms. And indeed, in the case of the states under examination in this study, this is
generally true. Finland, Poland, Estonia, and Latvia had manufacturing facilities that
provided them with domestically produced small arms and other weapons, as well as
aircraft, some based on native designs, though only the Poles produced their own tanks.
Knowing when the trade peaked also challenges the argument that arms sales
necessarily result in war. The majority of naval sales in the Eastern Baltic were
concluded during the 1920s. There was no war in the region until 1939. If the argument
that arms sales result in war is assumed to be true, a major conflict should have erupted in
the region by about 1930, perhaps 1935 at the latest. Obviously, wars cannot be blamed
just upon the sale of arms. Not all nations purchase or build weapons with the intention of
attacking their neighbors or from a drive to compete. Many nations, especially smaller
ones, buy weapons to deter would-be invaders, or as an element of ‘nation building’. The
Second World War in Europe was clearly a result of Nazi aggression, an aggression made
even easier by its being condoned and supported by the Soviet Union. Nazi success in the
early years of the war was partially a result of the lack of armaments possessed by the
nations forced to fight Hitler’s regime, as well as (sometimes) the manner in which they
used them. Perhaps the small states of the eastern Baltic would have had a better chance
of survival if they had spent more money on armaments, not less, and if they had formed
stronger military ties among themselves. Being weak and alone made them even easier
targets. A strong British and French commitment, one that included the supplying of arms
without an effort on the part of both nations to heartily profit from the sales, as well as to
train them in their use, would have strengthened the region and made the outbreak of
conflict less likely.
Moreover, and importantly, Anglo-French competition undermined the cordon
sanitaire, French grand strategy, and Britain’s desire to maintain a balance of power.
Both France and Great Britain constantly worried about the influence of the other, and
each labored to undermine the diplomatic and economic position of the other. This self-
destructive policy cut the underpinnings from the security system that the two former
allies had established in Eastern Europe. British abandonment of the area in the late
Conclusion 171
1930s, combined with French weakness and lack of will, as well as both nations’ mutual
failure to support and encourage the collective security efforts initiated by the respective
nations of the eastern Baltic, left a power vacuum that was filled by a revisionist
Germany and an expansionist Soviet Union. Britain and France sold arms as a means of
furthering their own political and economic influence and well-being, not from a desire to
increase the security of the nations that received them. If the sales happened to
accomplish this goal, so be it, but it was not the intention. This is demonstrated by the
extremes to which French and British corporate and governmental representatives would
go, as well as a willingness, especially in the case of France, to sell warships unsuitable
for operations in the cold waters of the Baltic, or, in the case of Great Britain, in a poor
state of repair. Good intentions come through only in the case of rare individual
participants, and not in the haphazard and often contradictory policies of Britain and
France.
One of the driving factors behind British strategy was a desire to prop up Britain’s
eroding naval superiority. The British sought to do this through arms limitations treaties,
but that was not the answer. The solution to Britain’s naval woes was an alliance, or
Entente, with France. The unthinkable to Britain was in reality the indispensable. Britain
could no longer hope to maintain the balance of power in Europe without making a
continental commitment. The First World War clearly showed this, but Britain refused to
see it. Anglo-French relations remained ‘cool’ until the summer of 1939, and the British
recoiled from any continental commitment to France from a fear that this would make the
French even more ‘intransigent’ regarding Germany, and hurt Britain’s chances of
appeasing the Nazis.6
The smaller states also cannot escape without criticism. The systems of corruption
dominating the procurement policies of Latvia, as well as the willingness of individuals
such as Admiral Keyserling to perpetuate this system, only further polluted the
diplomatic and economic environment. Finland’s willingness to help Nazi Germany
violate the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles regarding German construction of
submarines is also inexcusable, though the reasoning behind this has been shown. Neither
Britain nor France took the German violations seriously enough. The British actually
preferred to ‘placate’ Germany, so they ignored the breaches of Versailles, not thinking
them important enough to be a threat. The Foreign Office assumed that Germany could
be appeased.7
The French and British should have been more willing to fund military sales and
technological assistance to the states of Eastern and Central Europe. Piotr Wandycz
found it ‘striking’ that the French made no ‘sustained and consistent effort to strengthen
the military capabilities’ of their allies.8 This is because the French, like the British, were
far more interested in making money than in improving the secu-rity situation in Eastern
Europe. If France had developed a distinct policy of arming its friends in Eastern and
Central Europe, French willingness to do so might have countered German influence,9
particularly in the 1930s when countries like Romania drifted out of the French orbit
because France could not provide the weapons the small states desired.10 The Romanian
case is not an isolated example; the Finns also had problems buying weapons from
France in 1935, but this might have been due more to the incompetence of French
businessmen than to shortages of supplies.11
France and Britain both pursued a grand strategy that put more emphasis on economic
matters than on any other. Indeed, the British disarmed for much of the interwar period,
except for their navy. Pierre Cot, at a 1936 meeting of France’s Committee of National
Defense, said: ‘One obtains a hold over a country once one had got into it in an industrial
sense.’12 This shows much of French thinking during the interwar years, and of Britain’s
as well. And it is utterly false. Economic penetration of a nation does not give one control
over it, even if it is a small state. In 1914, Great Britain did not hesitate to declare war on
Germany, its largest trading partner, when Germany threatened Britain’s strategic
interests by invading Belgium and France. In 1941, Hitler had no hesitation about
invading the Soviet Union, even though Stalin was doing all he could to meet Germany’s
economic demands and feed the German war machine. Nations pursue the policies that
they believe best meet their own interests. During the interwar years, France and Great
Britain tried to use political influence as a means of furthering their economic goals, and
sometimes they were successful. But they missed the point. They should have been
pursuing their political goals and using economics as a means of doing this. They put the
economic cart before the political horse, and lost in the race for Eastern European
influence against a nation pursuing its political goals, but using economic power as one
of its strategies for doing so.
There is an inclination in much of the literature on interwar strategy to insist that the
British were able to shape French policy, particularly in the 1930s. In general, this seems
to be untrue, and appears to be based largely upon British statements about Great
Britain’s belief that it could manipulate French actions. The French did as they liked, at
least until the Rhineland crisis, and possibly up to Munich. And why not? The British
were never willing to give them the desired alliance until British cowardice and French
reluctance gave away the advantages of Versailles and Czechoslovakian military
assistance. Indeed, British policymakers sought to constrain and weaken France in nearly
any manner they could. Much is made of France’s need for Great Britain in the interwar
years, which is certainly true. But this neglects the hard truth that Britain needed France
just as much, if not more so, because the British had chosen to disarm and worked to
allow their most dangerous potential enemy to rearm. As Robert Young writes: ‘However
much the French themselves often sought to conceal the fact, there was always a French
policy conceived and pursued for indigenous French aims.’13
In studies of Great Power relations and policies the fact that smaller states were
pursuing policies of their own as well as the impact of these policies are often forgotten.
Though the failure of the eastern alliance system owed much to Britain and France, the
states of Eastern Europe, particularly Poland, conducted a foreign policy that made it
more difficult for London and Paris to resist revisionist states. One cannot, as Poland did,
seek border revision and territorial expansion while also opposing this, and hope to have
any measure of lasting security. Pursuing such a policy helps create the very environment
of insecurity that one hopes to preclude. Finland’s foreign policy took more of a
conciliatory line. And one must give the Finns their due. When dealing with the larger
states, at least after the early 1920s, they generally got what they wanted, in spite of the
interference and objections of the Great Powers.
When one considers the defensive nature of British naval, land, and air strategy shortly
before the outbreak of the war, it is striking that the British, in a large sense, were
pursuing the same type of defensive strategy for which France is so often ridiculed. Safe
Conclusion 173
behind its ‘Maginot Line’ of radar towers, fighter squadrons, ground controllers, and
Churchill’s aptly named ‘gallant few’, Britain intended to hold off the German threat.
Meanwhile, the Royal Navy was to guard the sea lines of communication with the
empire, support Britain’s allies, and insure the flow of resources vital for prosecuting the
war. The British Army planned to move into Belgium to confront the German menace
and fight outside the areas of vital importance to Britain, thereby keeping Germany from
threatening Britain’s industrial base with bombers. Meanwhile, Britain would gather its
strength, saving it for the time when it could counterattack its weakened foe. How was
this substantially different from France’s strategy? If there were so many similarities in
the strategic thinking of the two by the late 1930s, why then did Britain survive in 1940,
and France go down to defeat? The reason is simple: something the French call La
Manche, and the British call the Channel.
In the 1920s and 1930s, Britain and France missed many opportunities to strengthen
their own security, as well as to enhance the political stability of the Continent. They took
advantage of few of them. One that they missed was in the Baltic.
NOTES
1. Paul G.Halpern, The Mediterranean Naval Situation, 1908–1914 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1971), pp. 314–54.
2. S.i., Société des Ateliers & Chantiers de la Loire to MAE, 5 Nov. 1923.
3. Gábor Bátonyi, Britain and Central Europe, 1918–1933 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1999), p. 223;
György Ránki, Economy and Foreign Policy: The Struggle of the Great Powers for
Hegemony in the Danube Valley, 1919–1933 (New York: East European Monographs,
1983).
4. Thomas R.Maddux, ‘United States-Soviet Naval Relations in the 1930s: The Soviet Union’s
Efforts to Purchase Naval Vessels’, Naval War College Review (Fall 1976), 28–37.
5. Hinkkanen-Lievonen, British Trade. The author is one of the few who mentions arms sales to
the region.
6. Bond and Murray, ‘British Armed Forces’, p. 109.
8. Quoted in Alexander, ‘In Lieu of Alliance’, p. 423.
9. Philip C.F.Bankwitz, ‘Comment’, Journal of Strategic Studies (Dec. 1991), 443.
10. Thomas, ‘To Arm an Ally’, p. 254.
11. De Vaux to MAE, 8 Mar. 1935, and MAE to Ministre de la Guerre, stamped 4 Apr. 1935,
AMAE, Finlande 40.
12. Quoted in Alexander, ‘In Lieu of Alliance’, p. 423.
13. Young, ‘La Guerre’, pp. 55–6.
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Baltic Times
Riga Times
Navy List
Who’s Who
Index
Addison, Joseph, 80–2, 99(n61), 126

Admiralty, the, 27, 39, 103;
and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement, 183, 185, 193–4;
and appeasement, 207;
and arms sales, 95;
and Estonian officer training, 28–9;
and Finnish purchase requests, 34;
and Latvian officer training, 76, 79;
and Latvian submarine orders, 167;
naval advisors to Finland, 156, 158;
and the naval mission to Poland, 43;
and naval missions, 116–17;
naval strategy, 182–3;
sale of destroyers to Finland, 52–3, 55–6;
and submarines, 38;
support for the arms industry, 116–17;
training policy, 214–15
Agar, Lieutenant Augustus, 22, 34
aircraft, 36, 56, 73–5, 83, 103, 110, 130, 166, 174, 170, 177–8, 186
Åland Islands, 37
Allied Powers Commission, 31
Anglo-German Naval Agreement, 183–5, 192–4, 208, 210, 211;
French reaction, 185–7
Anglo-Polish Naval Agreement, 189
Anglo-Scandinavian Naval Agreement, 187–9
Anglo-Soviet Naval Agreement, 189
Anglo-Soviet trade agreement, 9
Answer to Treviranus, The (Polish submarine), 171
Ariadne (Finnish liner), 39
armor plate, 153–4
arms trade, 2, 214–15, 217
Armstrong, Whitworth & Company, 92
Arzur, Capitaine de frégate, 168
Augustin-Normand, 79, 83, 123, 124, 131, 134, 146, 148, 173, 177
Austro-Hungarian navy, Polish demands on, 40
Baladois, General Janis, 80

Baldwin, Stanley, 5, 156
Balodis, General Antons, 168
Balodis, Karlis, 168
Baltic states:
and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement, 184–5, 186;
Index 189
arming of, 10;

collective security, 210–11;
decline in warship sales, 178;
economic importance of, 9;
economic stability, 65;
market contraction, 216–17;
naval defense policies, 71;
naval development, 45;
spheres of influence, 121, 137, 198–9;
territorial disputes, 197–8
Baltic, the, 15;
economic competition in, 61–2;
minefields, 32;
naval powers, 66
Baltyk (Polish cruiser), 60
Bartenbach, Korvettenkapitän Karl, 144–6, 147, 149, 150, 152, 160, 215
Barthou, Louis, 200–1
Beardmore & Company, 72, 75, 76, 153–4
Beck, Józef, 172
Belgium, 4, 204–5
Bellanger de Neuilly sur Seine, 73–4
Beo (Finnish minesweeper), 32
Beretevitch, Lieutenant, 42
Berlin Agreement, 190
Bermondt-Avalov, Colonel P.M., 10, 18, 20
Biffaud, Capitaine de vaisseau, 35, 36, 155–6
Bing and Company, 123–4
Birkstein, Colonel Francis, 72
Blum, Ulrich, 145
Blyskawica (Polish destroyer), 174
Bolsheviks and Bolshevism, 8–9, 19, 20
Bonsdorf, Hjalmar von, 32
Bortnowski, General, 176
Brest-Litovsk, Treaty of, 19
Briand, Aristide, 89, 120, 197
Brisson, Vice-Admiral Jean Joseph, 18, 23, 76
Budrys, Colonel John, 31
Burbury, Vivian, 153, 154
Burton, Lieutenant-Commander T., RN, 44–5
Burza (Polish destroyer), 132
Caledon (British cruiser), 31

Calypso (British cruiser), 26
Cammel Laird, 172
Caradoc (British cruiser), 26
Caskte, Janis, 70
Cellier, Capitaine de frégate Raymond, 136
Chamberlain, Neville, 182, 206–7
Chantiers de la Gironde, 67, 68
Chantiers de la Loire, 67, 69, 78, 79, 89, 123, 124, 125, 126, 146, 173, 177
Chantiers Naval Français, 89, 89–90, 91–2, 131, 132, 133
Index 190
Chatfield, Sir Ernle, 186

Chlapowski, Alfred, 89–90, 91
Churchill, Winston, 208
Clemenceau, Georges, 4, 8, 9, 198
collective security, 11–12, 210–11, 218
Coontz, R.E., 30
Coppet, Monsieur de, 145, 146, 147, 149
Cordon Sanitaire, 1, 12, 33, 96, 196, 209, 217;
creation of, 7–9;
naval armaments and, 10
corruption, 80–2, 95, 122, 153, 218
Cot, Pierre, 219
Cowan, Rear-Admiral Walter, 27, 33, 38
Craigie, Robert, 186, 188
Crichton-Vulcan, 124, 125, 144, 146, 147, 148, 150, 152
Cromie, Commander Francis N., 16
Curzon, Lord, 27, 43, 44, 120
Czechoslovakia, 4, 8, 198, 203, 207–8
Czernicki, Commander, 174–5
Danzig, 42, 94
Dauktas, Colonel Theodore, 83
Dawson, Sir Trevor, 122
Denby, Edwin, 56–7
Denmark, 37, 42, 65, 67, 142, 187, 188
d’Entrecasteaux (French cruiser), 60
Desaix (French cruiser), 58–9, 93
Despard, Captain D.C., 154, 159, 205, 206
Deutschland (German pocket battleship), 170
disarmament, 6
Dorpat, Treaty of, 142, 149
Doyère, Monsieur, 90
Dunamünde, 27
Dvina River, 58
d’Ythurbide, Capitaine de corvette, 36, 156
Eastern Pact, 200–3

Eden, Anthony, 167, 184
Egerton, Captain W. de M., 103, 142
Electric Boat Company, 56, 57
Enckell, General Oskar, 32, 35, 37, 66–7, 109, 141
Estonia, 1, 8, 11, 19, 42, 46, 66, 137, 210;
aircraft, 83, 170;
attempt to buy British warships, 121–2;
British aid, 27;
British Air Mission, 158;
British influence in, 82–3;
corruption, 122;
destroyer sale scandal, 123–4;
effect of Washington Naval Treaties, 60;
and Lithuania, 197;
Index 191
National Submarine Collection Fund, 168–70;

naval development, 26–9;
naval expansion, 121–5;
officer training, 28–9, 82–3;
shipbuilding industry, 169, 178, 216;
submarines, 82–3, 121–3, 125;
territorial disputes, 198;
torpedo-boat orders, 169
Ferguson, Admiral James A., 38

Fiat, 75
Finland, 1, 8, 11, 21–2, 42, 46, 62, 121, 187, 188;
Air Force, 109, 110;
aircraft, 36, 103, 166;
armored coastal vessels, 152–5;
Army, 110;
attempt to buy Philippine torpedo boats, 166–7;
attempt to circumvent Washington Naval Treaties, 54–5;
attempt to purchase destroyers, 52–4, 55–6;
and Britain, 33, 37–9, 56, 153;
British air advisor, 159;
British influence in, 115, 116, 159;
and British naval advisors, 156–9;
coastal fortifications, 110–11;
corruption, 153;
defense policy, 165;
defense spending, 102–3, 113, 166;
effect of the Great Depression, 155;
effect of Washington Naval Treaties, 52–6;
fleet building program, 33, 37;
foreign companies seek orders, 67–70;
foreign naval advisors, 155–9, 160–1;
foreign policy, 220;
and France, 104–5;
French influence in, 22;
French naval mission to, 35, 36, 102;
German influence, 56, 158, 159–60;
German naval advisors, 144–6, 147, 160;
and Germany, 39, 141, 151, 190–2, 218;
impact of Kirke’s mission, 114–15;
Kirke’s mission to, 68, 102–19, 145, 160;
Kirke’s recommendations, 110–13;
language dispute, 115–16;
Lapua movement, 165–6;
minesweeping and laying operations, 32, 112–13;
naval advisors, 215;
naval bill, 66–7, 141–4, 152;
naval defense plan, 37;
naval expenditure, 142, 143, 144, 148, 156;
naval manpower, 32;
Index 192
naval program budget, 67;

naval programs, 142;
naval strength, 112–13, 165;
naval strategic problems, 142;
officer training, 36–7;
opposition to Washington Naval Treaties, 55;
public opinion, 68;
restructuring of armed forces, 165–6;
Revision Committee, 108–9;
seeks British advice, 67;
shipbuilding collaborators, 66;
shipbuilding industry, 178, 216;
and the Soviet threat, 111–12, 158;
submarines, 34–6, 37–8, 112, 142, 144–52
Finland, Gulf of, 17
Fisher, Admiral Sir John, 16
Fisher, Rear-Admiral W.W., 157
Floessel, Anton, 153, 154
Foch, Ferdinand, 4
France, 1, 3, 7–8;
alliance strategy, 3–4, 11, 102, 199, 204–5, 208, 210, 211;
Anglophobia, 79;
attempt to build influence in the Baltic, 1;
awards policy, 81, 113–14, 216;
Baltic policy, 4–5, 65–6, 137, 209–10, 218–19;
Baltic strategy, 8, 9, 15;
Baltic trade, 11;
and Belgium, 204;
and British competition for Finnish orders, 68–9;
British influence on, 219–20;
companies seek Finnish orders, 67, 68–9;
competition for Polish submarine contracts, 88–91;
competition with Britain, 95–6, 214;
and the Cordon Sanitaire, 7–8;
defense spending, 7;
and disarmament, 6;
and the Eastern Pact, 200–3;
economic competition, 10–12, 61–2, 65;
end of domination in Poland, 171;
and Estonia, 60, 82, 83;
and Estonian submarine orders, 122–3;
failure to aid naval development, 45;
fear of British Baltic influence, 209–10;
fear of German influence in Finland, 159–60;
fears for submarine plans, 69;
fears of Germany, 141;
and Finland, 22;
and Finnish officer training, 36;
and Finnish submarine orders, 146, 148–9;
Foreign Ministry, 4, 8, 9;
Franco-German tensions, 3, 6–7, 196–7;
Index 193
grand strategy, 3–5, 199–205, 209, 211, 219;

importance of naval missions, 45–6;
influence, 18;
influence in Poland, 86;
intervention in the Baltic, 17–18;
and Kirke’s mission to Finland, 68, 69;
and Klaipeda, 30, 31;
and Latvia, 70, 73;
Latvian aircraft contracts, 73–5;
Latvian bids, 72–4;
and Latvian officer training, 76;
and Latvian submarine orders, 126;
and Latvian warship contracts, 76–9;
and Latvia’s military replacement program, 167–8;
and Lithuania, 30–2;
and the Little Entente, 200;
and the London Naval Conference, 120;
and the Munich crisis, 207;
naval advisors to Finland, 156;
naval arms trade, 2;
naval mission to Finland, 35, 102;
naval mission to Poland, 45, 134–6;
naval missions, 106;
naval strategy, 85, 186;
offers to Estonia, 124–5;
and Poland, 4–5, 8, 9, 15, 31, 40, 95, 137, 199, 202;
Polish demand for compensation, 133–4;
Polish destroyer contracts, 91–2, 93;
and the Polish Navy, 84–5;
and Polish officer training, 86, 93–4;
Polish submarine contracts, 87–91, 92–3, 131, 132, 172–3, 177;
prices, 73–4, 175;
pursuit of contracts, 215–16;
Reboul’s mission to Lithuania, 31;
and the Russo-Polish War, 23;
sale of the Desaix, 58, 59;
and the Soviet Union, 203, 208;
sphere of influence, 23, 46, 137, 198–9;
strategy, 120–1;
submarines, 69;
talks with Latvia, 58;
torpedoes, 175;
Vansittart’s criticism of, 196;
war planning, 4, 121, 186, 204;
and the Washington Naval Treaties, 51, 61, 85, 93
Franco-Soviet Mutual Assistance Treaty, 203
French Navy, 95, 185–6;
Anglophobia, 51, 87;
and the arms trade, 215;
Baltic Squadron, 18, 22;
and Poland, 202;
strategy, 51, 132–3, 135;
Index 194
war planning, 121;

and the Washington Naval Treaties, 51
Gamelin, General Maurice, 202, 203, 204–5, 208, 209, 211

Gdynia, 94, 172, 176
Geneva Disarmament Conference, 136, 187
German-Polish Non-Aggression Pact, 136, 200, 202, 211
Germania Werft, 70, 122, 145
Germany, 1, 3, 62, 66, 67, 136, 208, 215, 217;
Baltic trade, 11;
bid for Finnish orders, 69;
and Estonia, 124;
and Finland, 21, 35, 56, 121, 141;
foreign policy, 197, 210;
Great War Baltic naval operations, 16;
influence in Finland, 159–60;
invasion of Estonia, 19;
invasion of Poland, 178;
and Latvia, 20;
and Lithuania, 20;
Lithuanian territory ceded to, 170;
naval advisors in Finland, 144–6;
naval concessions, 189;
naval power, 16;
Polish demand for ships, 40;
rearmament, 141, 181, 183, 184, 185, 187, 192, 210, 218;
relations with Finland, 190–2;
remilitarization, 165;
strategy, 203–4;
submariners in Finland, 150;
submarines, 145, 184, 185;
threat of, 185
Ginsbert, Julian, 176
Great Britain, 1, 95, 148;
air power, 182;
appeasement policy, 184, 205, 206–7, 218;
Baltic policy, 44, 65, 206, 210;
and the Baltic states, 7–8;
Baltic strategy, 8, 9, 15, 17, 189–90, 192–4, 208, 218;
and Baltic territorial disputes, 198;
Baltic trade, 11, 21, 65, 181;
companies seek Finnish orders, 67;
competition with France, 95–6, 214;
continental strategic commitment, 120, 209;
and the Cordon Sanitaire, 7;
Defence Requirements Committee, 181–2;
defense policy, 182;
defense spending, 7;
diplomatic strategy, 34;
Index 195
and disarmament, 6;
economic competition, 10–12, 61–2, 65;
economy, 156–7, 181;
and Estonia, 60, 82–3;
Estonian attempt to buy torpedo boats, 27;
and Estonian officer training, 82–3;
failure to aid naval development, 45;
fear of Bolshevism, 9;
fear of German influence in Finland, 159–60;
fears of Germany, 141;
and Finland, 21, 33, 35, 37–9;
and Finnish-German relations, 151–2;
and Finnish officer training, 36–7;
Finnish request for naval assistance, 33–4;
Foreign Office, 17, 21, 27, 33–4, 38–9, 40, 43, 54, 59–60, 65, 93, 103, 106, 114, 157, 181, 206;
foreign policy, 197;
and Franco-German tensions, 196;
and French naval relations, 185–6;
German threat to, 182;
and Germany’s influence in Finland, 146–7, 157, 191–2;
and Germany’s rearmament, 181;
grand strategy, 5–7, 205–7, 219, 220;
importance of naval missions, 45–6;
influence, 18;
influence on France, 219–20;
Kirke’s mission to Finland, 102–19, 160;
and Latvian officer training, 76;
Latvian submarine orders, 167;
and Latvian warship contracts, 76–7, 78, 79;
and Lithuania, 20;
maritime protectorates, 87;
military mission to Finland, 67;
and the Munich crisis, 207;
naval advisors to Finland, 155, 156–9;
naval arms limitation treaties, 187;
naval arms trade, 2;
naval mission to Poland, 40, 42–5;
naval missions, 11;
and Poland, 9, 58, 92, 93;
and Polish contracts, 86;
Polish destroyer contracts, 174;
and Polish officer training, 86;
Polish submarine contracts, 172–3;
pursuit of contracts, 215–16;
rearmament, 181–3, 205;
recognition of the Soviet Union, 105–6;
sale of mines to Latvia, 75;
and the sale of the Desaix, 58–9;
and Scandinavia, 187–9;
and the small states, 3;
sphere of influence, 23–4, 46, 137, 198–9;
strategic priorities, 206–7;
Index 196
support for the Baltic states, 17;

and the Washington Naval Treaties, 51, 55, 61
Great Depression, 155
great-power interests, 10–12
Greece, 43, 214
Grenz, Captain W., 169
Grom (Polish destroyer), 174
Gromboi (Russian cruiser), 56
Gryf (Polish minelayer), 134
Haas, Marcel, 78, 89, 147

Haller, General Józef, 22, 87
Hankey, Sir Maurice, 207
Harding, Warren G., 30
Hartmanis, General, 167–8
Hawthorne Leslie & Company, 79
Hietalahden Laivatelakka, 149
Hinkkanen-Lievonen, Merja-Liisa, 215
Hitler, Adolf, 165, 175, 185, 190, 203, 208, 219;
and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement, 183–4
Holland, 69–70
Hollyday, Major Thomas W., 58
Holsti, Dr Rudolf, 21, 53, 54, 114, 115, 190
Hotham, Rear-Admiral H., 157
Hovi, Kalervo, 11
Hughes, Charles E., 56, 57, 58
Hurja (Finnish torpedo boat), 34
Hussard (French destroyer), 58
Iku-Tursu (Finnish submarine), 150

Ilmarinen (Finnish coastal defense vessel), 154
Indrenius, Count Admiral Johannes, 32
Inskip, Sir Thomas, 206
International Convention for the Control of Arms Traffic, 33–4
Italy, 34, 37, 67, 68, 73, 75, 84, 86, 92, 114, 124, 177–8
Japan, 2, 6, 67, 124, 183;

threat of, 65, 182
Jolivet, Contre-Amiral Charles, 45, 59, 85, 87, 90, 91, 93, 95, 135, 160–1, 215
Jouen, Capitaine de corvette René, 77–8, 81
Jurininku Sajunga (Sailors Association), 84
Kaja (newspaper), 123, 124

Kalnins, Dr Paul, 128
Kaszub (Polish torpedo boat), 41
Kattegat, 15
Kerem, 168–9
Keyserling, Count Archibald von, 69, 70, 71, 73, 74, 79, 122, 126, 127, 218;
French bias, 80–1;
resignation, 127–9
Index 197
Kirke, General Sir Walter Mervyn St George, 68, 103, 106–9, 191–2;
and French competition, 113–14;
on his mission, 113;
recommendations, 110–13
Kivakäs, General, 35, 156
Klaipeda, 83, 84, 170, 198
Klaipeda Convention, 32
Klaipeda (Memel) region, 30, 31, 201
Kone Ja Siltarakennus Oy, 149
Koninklijke Maatschapij de Schelde, 171
Kovno, 209–10
Krakowiak (Polish torpedo boat), 41
Krisjanis Valdemārs (Latvian ice-breaker), 73
Kronstadt, 22, 68
Kujawiak (Polish torpedo boat), 41
Kurjer Warszaski (newspaper), 186
Lacplesis (Latvian ice-breaker), 70

Ladoga, Lake, 33, 34, 105, 142
Landswehr War, 19
Laroche, Monsieur, 135, 172, 173, 175
Latvia, 1, 19–20, 23, 46, 69, 137;
attempt to acquire submarines, 56–8;
calls for bids, 72–3;
corruption, 80–2, 95, 218;
and France, 11, 58;
French bias, 80–1;
French military mission, 70;
ice-breakers, 70, 72, 73;
and Keyserling’s resignation, 127–9;
and Lithuania, 171, 197, 198;
military replacement program, 167–8;
mines, 75–6;
nationalism, 82;
naval air arm, 73–5;
naval development, 29–30, 45;
naval expenditure, 72;
naval programs, 70–2;
naval strategy, 71, 168;
officer training, 76, 79;
purchase of submarine batteries, 126–7;
security guarantees, 77;
shipbuilding industry, 168, 178, 216;
submarines, 79–80, 81, 99(n61), 122, 125–6, 167, 168;
territorial disputes, 198;
war of independence, 18;
warship contracts, 76–82;
and the Washington Naval Treaties, 56–8
Laval, Pierre, 197
League of Nations, 56
Index 198
League of Nations Armament Commission, 37

League of Nations Conference of Ambassadors, 148–9
Lebedev, General, 124
Lembit (Estonian torpedo boat), 26
Lennuk (Estonian destroyer), 26
Lietuvaite (Lithuanian motorboat), 83
Limitation of Armaments, Treaty for the, 57
Lithuania, 1, 11, 20;
aircraft, 130;
cedes territory to Germany, 170;
coastal defense, 130;
and France, 30–2;
naval plans, 83–4;
navy, 129–30;
and Poland, 20, 201;
shipbuilding industry, 216;
Soviet occupation of, 171;
territorial disputes, 197–8
Lithuanian Women’s National Naval Assistance Society (Lietuvos Moteru Tautiniam), 84
Little Entente, the, 4, 200
Littledale, H.F., 28, 29
Litvinov, Maxim, 200
Litzellmann, A., 89
Lloyd, Major H.W.C., 80–2, 209
Lloyd George, David, 7, 17
Locarno Treaty, 120, 196–7
London Naval Conference, 120, 183
London Naval Treaty, 187, 188
L’Union de Cinq Chantiers Français de Constructions Navales, 90, 91
MacArthur, General Douglas, 166–7

MacDonald, Ramsay, 105
Magdeburg (German cruiser), 16
Maginot Line, 121, 204
Maison Wurms, 123
Mannerheim, Marshal Carl, 21, 35, 102, 190
Maréchal, Lucien, 89
Mazur (Polish torpedo boat), 41
Meierovics, Zigfrids Anna, 71, 72, 77–8
Mikula (Finnish minesweeper), 32
Millerand, Alexandre, 4, 196–7
minefields, clearing of, 16–17
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, 190, 208
Montcalm (French cruiser), 17
Moore, Captain N.C., 159, 191
Moritz Magnus Jr, 123–4
Mosinskis, Celina, 84
Muirhead-Gould, Captain G.C., 130
Munich accords, 207
Munich Crisis, 198, 207
Index 199
Naczynski, 86
Nagius-Nagevicius, Brigadier General Vladas, 84
naval advisors, importance of, 215
Non-Intervention Committee, 169
Normand du Hâvre, 67
Normand/Loire/Schneider group, 90–1
Norway, 187, 188
Nowotny, Captain Bogumil, 40
N.V.Ingenieurskantoor voor Scheepsbouw den Hague (IvS), 122, 144, 145, 147
Oksala, Arvi, 150

Olenius, Colonel, 205
Orzel (Polish submarine), 174
Parquet, Lieutenant-Colonel Emmanuel du, 70

Partizanus, the (Lithuanian motorboat), 83
Päts, Konstantin, 19
Paul-Boncour, Joseph, 200
Perkunas (Lithuanian ice-breaker), 129
Petrovich, Bielo, 42
Philippines, 166–7
Phillips, Captain Tom, 207
Picot, Capitaine de corvette (reserve), 173
Piétri, François, 186–7
Piip, Dr Ants, 27, 28
Pikkeri (Estonian gunboat), 169
Piłsudski, Józef, 23, 40, 131, 132, 211;
and the French Naval Mission, 135, 136
Pitka, Admiral Juhan, 27, 29, 82
plans, copying of, 69
Podhalanin (Polish torpedo boat), 41
Poincaré, Raymond, 31
Poland, 1, 11, 22–3, 46;
aircraft, 174;
alliance with France, 9, 210;
and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement, 186;
and the Anglo-Polish Naval Agreement, 189;
attempt to purchase the Desaix, 58, 59;
and Britain, 9, 58;
British naval mission to, 40, 42–5;
Colonial and Maritime League, 176;
competition for contracts, 86;
construction of Gdynia, 94;
defenses, 1–2;
demands compensation from France, 133–4;
destroyer contracts, 91–2, 93, 174;
and the Eastern Pact, 201–3;
effect of Washington Naval Treaties, 58–60;
fleet expansion program, 42;
foreign policy, 171, 200, 201–3, 211, 220;
Index 200
and France, 4–5, 8, 9, 15, 40, 137, 200;

French naval mission to, 45;
and French strategy, 201;
German invasion of, 178;
and Germany, 171, 203;
and Lithuania, 201;
merchant marine, 43;
naval air arm, 177–8;
naval expansion, 131–4;
naval expenditure, 132;
naval forces, 23;
naval programs, 85–6, 91–2, 132, 133, 175–6, 203;
naval strategy, 85;
naval strength, 42;
officer training, 44, 86, 93–4;
public submarine subscription, 171–2;
relations with Lithuania, 20;
requests French aid, 84–5;
shipbuilding industry, 178, 216;
strategic plan, 94;
submarines, 87–91, 92–3, 131, 132, 171–4, 177;
territorial disputes, 197, 198;
threats to, 85;
torpedoes, 174–5;
Vistula River Flotilla, 42;
and the Washington Naval Treaties, 85
Pomorzanin (Polish steamer), 40
Poole, D.C., 58
Porębski, Rear-Admiral Kazimierez, 40, 84
Powell, Lieutenant-Colonel P.L.W., 108
Prezydentas Smetona, (Lithuanian minesweeper) 129, 170–1
Procopé, Hjalmar J., 69, 105, 114, 149
Puck, 22
Pusta, Estonian Prime Minister, 60
Querre, Admiral A.le, 31
Radzin, General, 81
Rambouillet Accords, 177
Ránki, György, 214
Rapallo agreement, 190
Reboul, Lieutenant-Colonel Constantin, 31
Red International of Trade Unions, 150
Rennie, Sir Ernest, 53–4, 56, 103, 105, 108, 147, 153, 155, 156, 158
Rhineland, 121, 175, 203, 204, 210
Richard, Capitaine de vaisseau, 135–6
Riga, defense of, 18, 20
Riga, Gulf of, 16
Riga Treaty, 29
Index 201
Rogers, Hugh, 201

Romania, 8, 43, 117, 199–200, 219
Rome Conference, 62
Roos, Commander Yrjö, 114, 116
Rosyth dockyard, 41
Royal Air Force, 6, 182
Royal Navy, 29, 37, 95, 116, 182, 205, 214, 220;
Baltic intervention force, 26;
Baltic operations, 16, 17, 27;
defense responsibility, 6;
naval superiority, 192;
rearmament, 208;
and the Russian Civil War, 21–2;
and submarines, 185;
war planning, 6
Rumbold, Sir Horace, 43–4
Russian Civil War, 21–2
Russian Revolution, 16, 21
Russo-Baltic Company, 28
Russo-Polish War, 23, 40
Rys (Polish submarine), 132
Sairigné, Monsieur de, 68

Sakovsky, 81–2, 122
Salvage Association of Helsingfors, 39
Salza, Admiral Herman, 82, 122, 137
Samuel White, 173, 174, 176–7
Saukko (Finnish submarine), 149
Sautter-Harlé, 75–6
Savanoris (Lithuanian motorboat), 83
Scale, Captain J.D., 34
Schelswig-Holstein (German battleship), 1
Schneider-Creusot, 89, 124
Schoultz, G.T.J.von, 32, 53, 69, 102, 103, 114, 146, 155, 156;
and the Finnish-language dispute, 115–16
Schwank, Commander Einar-Wilhelm, 114, 116, 152;
pro-German reputation, 191
Second World War, 1, 217
Sep (Polish submarine), 174
Sikorski, General, 85, 90, 91–2, 94
Simon, Sir John, 184, 185
Sinclair, Rear-Admiral Edwyn Alexander, 17
Sisu (Finnish torpedo boat), 34
Skaggerak, 15
Slazak (Polish torpedo boat), 41
Smetona, Antanas, 84
Smits of Rotterdam, 69–70
Sniuktas, General, 130
Somersalo, Artur, 36
Sorbier, Monsieur de, 89
Sourander, Commander Achilles, 116
Index 202
Soviet Union, 1–2, 105, 150, 189, 208, 215;

and Finland, 158, 190–1;
and France, 203;
invasion of Estonia, 19;
invasion of Latvia, 19;
invasion of Lithuania, 20;
and Lithuania, 171;
and the Little Entente, 200;
the October Revolution, 8–9;
Polish attempt to acquire ships, 41;
threat of, 71;
threat to Finland, 34
Spade, Captain Theodor, 127
Spanish Civil War, 169
spheres of influence, 23–4, 46, 137, 198–9
Spidola (Latvian submarine), 81
Ståhlberg, K.J., 21, 166, 190
submarines, 56–7, 62;
and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement, 184, 185;
copying of plans, 69;
Estonia, 82–3, 121–3, 125;
Finland, 34–6, 37–8, 112, 142, 144–52;
Germany, 145, 184, 185;
Latvia, 79–80, 81, 99(n61), 122, 125–6, 167, 168;
Poland, 87–91, 92–3, 131, 132, 171–4, 177
Sulev (Estonian torpedo boat), 28
surplus ships, 61
Svenska Aero Aktisbolaget, 75
Sventoji, 170
Sweden, 37, 55, 66, 114, 142, 187, 188;
companies seek Finnish orders, 67–8, 69
Swirski, Admiral Jerzy, 40, 43, 88, 91–2, 133, 176, 202
Tallents, Colonel Stephen, 198

‘Ten Year Rule’, 5
Tezew, 44
Thornycroft, 67, 68, 174
torpedoes, 36, 174–5
Tôrvand, General, 124, 168–9
Trevelyan, C.P., 105–6
Treviranus, Gottfried, 171
Trousseau, Colonel, 31
Tudor Battery Company, 149
Tulenheimo, Professor, 142–3
Turkey, 214
Ulmanis, Kärlis, 17, 20

United States of America, 2, 17, 30, 54, 56–8, 60, 67, 86, 198, 215
Väinämöinen (Finnish coastal-defense vessel), 154

Vansittart, Sir Robert, 196
Index 203
Varonis (Latvian ice-breaker), 70

Vaughan, Sir Tudor, 77, 79, 80–1
Venclova, Tomas, 196
Vendetta (British destroyer), 26
Vennin, Capitaine de frégate, 22, 68–70, 73, 74–5, 76, 79, 95, 160–1, 215;
and British influence in Estonia, 82
Versailles Treaty, 4, 5, 16, 22, 36, 56, 141, 145, 148, 160, 183, 196, 197;
and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement, 184
Verulam (Finnish destroyer), 39
Vesihiisi (Finnish submarine), 150
Vesikko (Finnish submarine), 150, 162(n35)
Vetehinen (Finnish submarine), 150
Vickers, 67, 75, 76–7, 79, 81–2, 99(n61), 122, 124, 125, 172, 173, 174
Vilna, 20, 197, 201, 209
Virsaitis (Latvian minesweeper), 70, 73, 75
Vittoria (Finnish destroyer), 39
Voionmaa, Väinö, 148
Voltaire (French cruiser), 31
von der Goltz, Count Rüdiger, 10, 19, 20
Vortigern (British destroyer), 26
Wakeful (British destroyer), 26

Wambola (Estonian destroyer), 26
Wandycz, Piotr, 218
Warsaw, Battle of, 23
Washington Disarmament Treaties, 56
Washington Naval Treaties, 51–2, 61–2, 85, 93, 183, 186–7;
effect on Estonia, 60;
effect on Finland, 52–6;
effect on Latvia, 56–8;
effect on Poland, 58–60
Westerplatte, 1
Weygand, General, 203
Wharton, Captain Eric L., RN, 43, 44
White Russian forces, 20, 21
Wicher (Polish destroyer), 132
Wilk (Polish submarine), 132
Windau, 58
Winter War, the, 166
Wulf (Finnish minesweeper), 32
Wurms, 72, 124, 126
Yarrow, 174
Young, Robert, 220
Yrjö-Koskinen, Baron, 154
Yugoslavia, 8, 199
Zbik (Polish submarine), 132

‘Zinoviev Letter’, the, 156

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BRITAIN, FRANCE AND THE NAVAL

ARMS TRADE IN THE BALTIC 1919–

1. Austro-Hungarian Naval Policy, 1904–1914

2. Far-Flung Lines: Studies in Imperial Defence in Honour of Donald Mackenzie

3. Maritime Strategy and Continental Wars

4. The Royal Navy and German Naval Disarmament 1942–1947

5. Naval Strategy and Operations in Narrow Seas

7. The Italian Navy and Fascist Expansionism, 1935–1940

8. The Merchant Marine and International Affairs, 1850–1950

9. Naval Strategy in Northeast Asia: Geo-strategic Goals, Policies and Prospects

12. Imperial Defence, 1868–1887

14. The Royal Navy and Nuclear Weapons

16. Chinese Grand Strategy and Maritime Power

17. Britain’s Anti-submarine Capability, 1919–1939

ISBN 0-203-51964-7 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-58173-3 (Adobe e-Reader Format)

Series Editor’s Preface ix

Select Bibliography 175

The dates of cited documents have been translated into English.

FRENCH AND BRITISH GRAND STRATEGY

THE CREATION OF THE CORDON SANITAIRE

NAVAL ARMAMENTS AND THE CORDON SANITAIRE

GREAT POWER INTERESTS

France’s new Eastern European alliance policy constituted, in conjunction

Stabilization of France’s Alliance Policies in East Central Europe 1919–1921 (Turku,

THE FIRST WORLD WAR AND ALLIED INTERVENTION IN THE

THE BRITISH AND FRENCH INTERVENTION

POLITICAL INDEPENDENCE: THE ORIGINS OF THE SUCCESSOR

To speak of naval development in Lithuania is to confer upon the events a title

encourage them to spend unnecessarily on their navy. Moreover, Rumbold believed

The Washington Naval Conference opened on 12 November 1921. The meeting of

Legion of Honour, as well as the certainty of a reward of a more

Acting on the French proverb that ‘les petits cadeaux entretiennent

Sakovsky is such an ass in his own business that he actually went to

Commander Achilles Sourander replaced Roos. In 1929, Commander Einar Schwank

36. Wihtol, ‘La pensée navale finlandaise’, p. 225.

Meanwhile, rumors circulated that an unnamed Dutch firm, undoubtedly

Knatchbull-Hugessen proved correct about D.P.’s chances. British Tudor managed to

After weeks of overhauling, the ‘fleet’, consisting of the ‘President

THE FRENCH NAVAL MISSION TO POLAND AND FRANCE’S

were certainly needed to protect Gdynia, as were destroyers, submarines, and

46. ‘Organization General de la Marine’, n.d., ‘Programme Naval—Budget’, n.d., ‘Rapport de

FINLAND’S NAVAL BILL

The amendment produced a strange constitutional situation: it would allow the

THE FINNISH SUBMARINE PURCHASES

Bartenbach came to Finland as naval advisor in May 1924. He received his

[w]hile constantly expressing their desire to form their Navy on the

THE ARMORED SHIPS

FINLAND’S NAVAL ADVISOR AND BRITAIN’S QUEST FOR

missions as a means of increasing British prestige, and supporting British shipbuilding.

The importance of a ‘naval advisor’, as opposed to a ‘naval attaché’ or ‘naval

41. Laroche to MAE, 8 Mar. 1935, AMAE, Pologne 316.

THE ANGLO-GERMAN NAVAL AGREEMENT

FRANCE AND THE ANGLO-GERMAN NAVAL AGREEMENT

THE ANGLO-SCANDINAVIAN AND ANGLO-POLISH NAVAL

THE ANGLO-SOVIET NAVAL AGREEMENT

FINLAND AND BRITAIN’S FEARS

In a 3 February 1936 memorandum, Foreign Office Permanent Undersecretary Sir Robert

FRANCE, GERMANY, AND BRITAIN

THE SMALL STATES

GRAND STRATEGY, FRANCE, AND FAILURE

GRAND STRATEGY, GREAT BRITAIN, AND FAILURE

FROM MUNICH TO HEL—FRANCO-BRITISH FAILURE