In Helsinki last week a surprise guest crashed a birthday party. It was Adolf Hitler. He appeared at a celebration in honor of Finland's hard-bitten Field Marshal, Baron Carl Gustaf Mannerheim, now a well-preserved 75, who was probably less surprised than most of his countrymen.
To his host the uninvited guest brought the Great Cross of the German Order of the Eagle,* one of the Third Reich's most dazzling decorations. Mannerheim, reciprocating, buttered up the Nazis by calling them brothers in arms, hoped this year might "see the end of Bolshevist barbarism." Afterward he held what Berlin called "lengthy conversations" with...
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