Foreign support of Finland in the Winter War

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Foreign support in the Winter War consisted of materiel, men and moral support to the Finnish struggle against the Soviet Union in the Winter War. World opinion at large supported the Finnish cause. The Second World War had not yet begun in earnest and was known to the public as the Phoney War; at that time, the Winter War saw the only real fighting in Europe besides the German and Soviet invasion of Poland, and thus held major world interest. The Soviet aggression was generally deemed unjustified. Various foreign organizations sent material aid, such as medical supplies. Finnish immigrants in the United States and Canada returned home, and many volunteers (one of them future actor Christopher Lee) traveled to Finland to join Finland's forces: 8,700 Swedes, 1,010 Danes (including Christian Frederik von Schalburg, a captain in the Danish Royal Life Guards and later commander of the Free Corps Denmark, a volunteer unit created by Nazi Germany in Denmark during World War II), about 1,000 Estonians, 850 Ukrainians,^{[1][better source needed]} 725 Norwegians, 372 Ingrians, 366 Hungarians,^[2] 346 Finnish expatriates, 4 Latvians, 2 Lithuanians and 190 volunteers of other nationalities made it to Finland before the war was over.

Pope Pius XII condemned the Soviet attack on 26 December 1939 in a speech at the Vatican and later donated a signed and sealed prayer on behalf of Finland.^[3]