Mannerheim's secret envoy to Berlin who brokered the German-Finnish military pact that led to the Continuation War
When Himmler asked him to lead Finnish armed resistance after the 1944 ceasefire, Talvela replied he would do so only 'on the orders of Marshal Mannerheim.'
A product of the Jäger movement, Talvela rose to prominence during the Winter War when his Group Talvela destroyed two Soviet divisions at Tolvajärvi, securing Finland's first major victory. In the autumn of 1940, Mannerheim dispatched him as a personal envoy to Berlin, where he negotiated secret military coordination between the Finnish and German general staffs: the diplomatic bridge that brought Finland into the Continuation War alongside the Wehrmacht. After the war he worked as a businessman and served on the Helsinki city council; the second recipient of the Mannerheim Cross, he was promoted to general of the infantry in 1966.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1916Jäger volunteer, 27th Royal Prussian Jäger Battalion
- 1918Battalion commander (Whites), Finnish Civil War; major
- 1919–1922C-in-C, Aunus expedition; battalion commander, Viena expedition
- 1926–1927Commander, Savo Jäger Regiment
- 1939.12–1940.04Commander Group Talvela (Tolvajärvi victory), then III Corps; major general
- 1940.09Mannerheim's personal envoy to Berlin; negotiated German-Finnish military coordination
- 1941.06–1942.01Commander, VI Corps, Army of Karelia; Mannerheim Cross (3 Aug 1941)
- 1942–1944Finnish army representative at German High Command; lt. general; commanded Aunus Group 1944
Related historical events
- 1914–1918First World WarVolunteer in a German Jäger battalionIn 1916, he served as a volunteer in the 27th Royal Prussian Jäger Battalion.
- 1939.11–1940.03The Winter WarMannerheim's personal envoy to BerlinAfter the Winter War he went to Berlin as Mannerheim's personal envoy and negotiated secret Finnish-German military cooperation in 1940-1941, paving the way for the Continuation War.
Envoy to Berlin and the Finnish-German military alignment, 1940-1941
In autumn 1940 Mannerheim turned to Talvela as his trusted representative in negotiations with Germany over arms and military cooperation. Finland had received no German aid during the Winter War, and after Germany occupied Norway and Denmark in April 1940 the country was cut off from its Western trade routes; the Moscow Peace Treaty had already cost it territory and much of its industrial capacity. In these circumstances Germany was the only remaining source of weapons and a potential counterweight to Soviet pressure. Talvela later met Hermann Göring in December 1940, and on 15-18 January 1941 he met Franz Halder, chief of staff of the German army high command, and Göring, who questioned him about Finnish plans to defend the country against a renewed Soviet invasion.
Talvela also took part in the Finnish-German negotiations over weapons shipments and the transit of German troops through Finland. He was among the Finnish officers who sought a Finnish volunteer force inside the regular German armed forces, and in 1940 he was involved in talks about forming a Finnish jaeger battalion within the Wehrmacht; those talks produced no result, and some 1,400 Finnish volunteers were instead recruited into the Finnish Volunteer Battalion of the Waffen-SS. On 30 May 1941 he attended the meeting at which Risto Ryti, Mannerheim, Heinrichs and others accepted the results of the Salzburg and Berlin staff talks, subject to conditions such as a guarantee of Finnish independence and the pre-Winter War borders.
Post-war Finnish accounts treat this period as the stage in which the military alignment with Germany hardened. The sources do not show Talvela as an adherent of Nazi ideology: he was regarded as an Anglophile, his Freemasonry nearly blocked his appointment as the army's representative at the German high command, and his relations with the SS organization and the Finnish SS battalion remained cool. The alignment is better explained by the search for security against Soviet pressure than by ideological affinity.