Pictured: Axis General von Falkenhorst meeting Finnish General Hjalmar Siilasvuo on June 24, 1941.

Few anticommunists have the audacity to explicitly and unambiguously defend Operation Barbarossa, but Finland’s participation is an important exception. This is when generic anticommunists take a break from repetitively equating us with the Fascists and instead portray them as ‘lesser evils’ whom we forced Finland to choose, otherwise we would have either enslaved or exterminated the entire Finnish population (just because). Whereas presenting facts explaining the German–Soviet Pact of 1939 as anything other than sheer sadism is an offence worse than Shoah denial, justifying Finland’s alliance with the Third Reich is more than welcome.

Quoting Henrik Meinander in Finland in World War II: History, Memory, Interpretations, pages 71–4:

The Finnish government and population were […] strategically and mentally prepared for the new war. In fact, the Finnish Army and its related services would from the start mobilize a larger proportion (16 percent) of the country’s population than any other European nation at the time. In the morning of 22 June 1941, Hitler made his famous radio speech, in which he declared war on the Soviet Union and mentioned that “the brave Finnish comrades‐in‐arms” would take part in this huge offensive.

The latter information did not correspond with the Finnish strategy of disguising their participation in the war as a defensive reaction to Soviet attacks. [Berlin’s] authorities thus softened their formulation the same day by describing Finnish involvement as “shouldering a European anti‐communist frontier” together with [the Third Reich] and [the Kingdom of] Romania.³¹

The dilemma was soon solved. The Soviet Air Forces directed strikes against Finnish airports and other military sites used by [Axis] armed forces. Civilian targets were also attacked. This gave the Finnish parliament reason to announce on 25 June 1941 that Finland was again at war with the Soviet Union.

Next day President Ryti gave a radio speech in which he accused the Soviet Union of beginning the war and described the new conflict as Finland’s second defense war. He carefully avoided mentioning the military preparations together with [the Third Reich], but emphasized that the war was now fought together with the “successful German armed forces,” which would guarantee a lucky outcome of the defense war and put a definite end to the eastern threat to Finland.³²

During the first month of war, the [Fascist]–Finnish master strategy worked out according to the original plans, as the [Wehrmacht] had reached the outskirts of Leningrad at rapid speed and the Finnish Army began its own offensive north of Lake Ladoga with success.

Mannerheim was also eager to give bold statements. He had already given the new war a Finnish expression, the Continuation War. On 10 July 1941, he revealed in a famous order of the day—the so‐called “Scabbard Order”—that the aim of the offensive was not only to reconquer the territories lost in the Winter War: “The freedom of Karelia and a great Finland are glimmering in front of us in the enormous avalanche of world historic events.”

The Western Powers required an immediate explanation for Mannerheim’s order from the Finnish government, which answered that his vision did not reflect an official line. This was not a fully honest explanation. Even if [Helsinki] and [Berlin] had not agreed upon any specific future borderlines, they had certainly agreed on a plan, in which the Finnish Army should advance far into Soviet Eastern Karelia and keep its positions there until the war was over.

This was indeed what the Finnish Army did. The Finnish offensive was decisively facilitated by the simultaneous [Wehrmacht] operations, which forced the Red Army to split its forces along its whole western border. In early December 1941, the Finnish Army reached its intended positions in Eastern Karelia and was called to a halt by Mannerheim. The Finnish leadership was not prepared to deliver more than originally promised to its [Fascist] brother‐in‐arms, and this was due to two things.

First, the [Wehrmacht’s] eastward offensive had been a swift Blitzkrieg only during the first two months. In the autumn of 1941, it was increasingly obstructed by both the Russian winter, which arrived early and was even harsher than usual, and the [determined] resistance of the Red Army.

In such a situation the Finnish leadership was cautious not to let the Army bleed more than necessary and rejected repeatedly [Berlin’s] requests for a stronger support for their attacks on Leningrad and the Murmansk Railway. Plus the longer the war continued, the more [that] the Finns had to consider the possibility that the Soviet Union could survive and even beat its enemies. This prospect was also partially behind the second reason for the Finnish resistance to mount further offensive operations.

Despite the outbreak of the war, the Finnish government had maintained diplomatic ties to Great Britain and the United States, which generally speaking stood ideologically much closer to Finland than the [Third Reich]. Regardless of how the war would end, the Finnish leadership was thus strongly motivated to preserve good relations with the West as much as possible.

Throughout the war, Finland rejected an official political alliance with [the Third Reich] and claimed consistently in its westward communication that Finland fought its own defensive war against the Soviet Union. On 11 November 1941, the Finnish government sent a lengthy explanation to Washington DC, in which it was emphasized that Finland fought its own war free of any political bonds to [the Third Reich].³³

The timing for this statement was not a coincidence. The Western Powers had repeatedly demanded a Finnish withdrawal from the war and sharpened their voice in the autumn of 1941, when the Finnish Army began to threaten the railway connection between Murmansk and Central Russia, via which a large proportion of the Western material support to the Soviet Union was delivered. Great Britain had promised its Soviet ally to declare war on Finland if the Finns did not halt their offensive.

In November 1941, it sent this ultimatum to the Finnish government, which however neither for military nor diplomatic reasons could reveal that the request would very shortly be fulfilled. On 7 December, the Finnish Army had reached its most eastern destination and halted its offensive for good.

But this was too late. The day before, on the Finnish Independence Day, the British government declared war on Finland, and from that moment the 3.7 million Finns were officially fighting against not only the mighty Soviet Union but also the whole British Commonwealth. Even if their armed forces never met on the battlefield, the British war declaration undoubtedly complicated the Finnish diplomacy and resulted in Finland having to also sign a peace treaty with Great Britain in Paris in 1947.

As is known, early December 1941 was also a turning point in the war from a global perspective. The same day as the Finnish Army halted its offensive in Soviet Eastern Karelia, [Axis] Air Forces conducted a devastating strike on Pearl Harbor. Within a few days of the outbreak of the Pacific War, [Berlin] had also declared war on the United States, which meant that the conflict had truly escalated into world war.

The Axis Powers still had the initiative, but self‐evidently the American entry into the war had a decisive impact on developments in the longer run. Within a month, the consequences of the Pacific War were also felt at the Finnish–Soviet front.

Stalin had received advance information of the [Axis] attack south‐ and eastward in the Pacific, and in November 1941 he had already ordered the transfer of 20 Soviet divisions from the Far East to the European war scene. This gave the Red Army a momentous boost in the defense of Moscow, and in January 1942, the Red Army also increased its pressure on the Finnish–[Fascist] front sector to secure the threatened Murmansk Railway connection.³⁴

The Finnish High Command naturally followed the development on this larger war scene and had by then become increasingly pessimistic about the possibilities of [an Axis] victory on the Eastern Front. During the winter of 1941–42, Marshal Mannerheim also received alarming reports about how the [Fascists] had gravely missed their chance to win over the population of the conquered areas in the Soviet Union by treating them with horrific brutality.

This not only destroyed the credibility of the anti‐communist arguments in [Axis] propaganda, but also cast a shadow on their Finnish brother‐in‐arms, who had emphasized that they, too, fought a war against communism and for the freedom of the Karelian people.

(Emphasis added. See here for more.)