(From The Popular Journal of Eastern European Studies, Vol 23, 1976.)
The White Admiral – Or, the Limits of Great Man History in the Finnish Context
When Finland was a Grand Duchy under the Russian Tsars, many Finns served as soldiers and officers in the imperial Russian armed forces. For the noble families in Finland, military careers were traditional and customary, and after 1809 many of the sons of noble fathers would serve the Emperor of Russia and the Grand Duke of Finland instead of the King of Sweden. In the Imperial Russian Navy, especially, Finnish officers were comparatively over-represented in terms of the small size of the Grand Duchy's population within the empire. The strong Finnish maritime traditions were behind the process that led to thirty officers born in the Grand Duchy to rise into flag rank in the Tsar's naval forces.
Of these men, two stand out above all others. One of them is Oscar von Kraemer, the son of an impoverished noble family who was sent into St. Petersburg to become a soldier, and who rose to the highest military position achieved by a Finlander officer in the Tsarist military: a full admiral, the flag captain and general aide-de-camp to two Tsars, the Chief of Staff of the Imperial Navy, and finally a member of the State Council. The second, of course, is Gustaf Mannerheim, one of the most discussed and controversial of Finland-born soldiers in history. Some call him a hero, the saviour of Finland, and others yet consider him a butcher and a tyrant. When we discuss Finnish naval officers, Mannerheim can't, won't be ignored.
Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim was born in 1867. His father, Count Carl Robert Mannerheim, was an artistic and poetic personality, but he also worked as a businessman and among other things was involved in developing the forest industry in Finland by founding a saw mill in Kuusankoski. After Mannerheim's business ventures ended in a personal bankruptcy in 1878, though, he was forced to accept a position in looking after the interests of the von Julin family in St. Petersburg – his wife Hedvig was a von Julin, and this arrangement was agreed upon to save Hedvig Mannerheim and her children from financial and social ruination. Carl Robert had heavily anti-Russian views himself, and thus his destiny contained a fair bit of irony. Only four years after the family's arrival to Russia, in 1882, Carl Robert died in a traffic accident, his skull crushed by an oncoming coach with an out-of-control team of horses, and his wife Hedvig was left without financial support – the very thing the family's relocation to the Russian capital was meant to prevent. The young widow had no less than seven children.
Young Gustaf Mannerheim, who had already started his schooling in St. Petersburg, was sent to join the Naval Cadet Corps of the Imperial Russian Navy in 1884 – at the age of 16. Hedvig Mannerheim was helped in this decision by a Finland-born officer in the Russian military, Major General Johan Alexander Berg whom Hedvig had met in 1882 when he became the director of the military hospital at Peterhof. Young Gustaf didn't much care for the conditions he had landed in at the military school, especially as he was older than most of the other cadets and thus found it hard to fit in. He even considered leaving the school and going absent without leave, to make his way to Finland in protest of his mother's decision for his career. In the end, though, his sense of duty and love and worry for his mother and siblings won out.
Young Mannerheim had a rough time in the Cadet Corps. He found it hard to get used to military discipline, and especially learning even passable Russian was difficult for him. In 1893, though, despite everything, Mannerheim graduated from the Cadet Corps with middling grades and was given his first commission in the Russian Baltic Fleet in the rank of Midshipman. The first vessel he would serve on would be the old monitor Rusalka, then serving as a training hulk.
Mannerheim's early military career was helped by the fact that at the time the chief of staff of the Kronstadt military port was the Finnish-born Rear Admiral Teodor Avellán. The young Finnish officer was soon noticed by Avellán, a man who had made something of a name for himself in high-profile positions, and the Rear Admiral strived to help Mannerheim along in his career. This kind of a system of nationality-based patronage was something that was commonly used in the Russian military by Finnish officers who knew that without it, their younger countrymen, especially those from less affluent families, would end up in a disadvantage in comparison to ethnically Russian officers who had patronage systems of their own – whether or not they had the practical military skills and aptitude needed to work as an officer in the Tsar's forces. In 1896 Avellán ascended to the prestigious position of the Chief of Staff of the entire Navy, and this meant that his support was vitally important for Gustaf Mannerheim.
Mannerheim was made Lieutenant in 1895 and he received his first command, the torpedo boat (”torpedo cruiser”) Posadnik. The same year Mannerheim also married Anastasia Arapova, the heiress of the fortune previously belonging to the wealthy Major General Nikolai Arapov. Anastasia was five years older than her new husband. Two children were born to the couple: the son Carl (1897) and the daughter Anastasie (1898). The marriage, however, was generally unhappy and practically ended in a separation in 1904. From Gustaf Mannerheim's point of view, it had always been a marriage of convenience: the Arapov fortune allowed him to pay off the debts that he had incurred maintaining his status as a young, noble and dashing naval officer in St. Petersburg. During the marriage, Mannerheim had numerous other romantic relationships with young women.
In 1898 Mannerheim was promoted to Senior Lieutenant and given command of the torpedo destroyer Sokol. Gustaf Mannerheim's career got a significant boost from Admiral Avellán's support and protection, and thus in the year 1900 we already find him as a Captain 2nd Rank. The following year, he was given the command of a cruiser. The Vityaz was already somewhat long in the tooth, but for a young, ambitious officer it was an important command, and a good stepping-stone for the future.
On the vessels Mannerheim commanded he was known as an aristocratic officer who knew his own considerable value. He would not tolerate mistakes by his subordinates and he maintained strict discipline. This all of course hewed back to his studies and experiences at the Naval Cadet Corps where, as a comparative outsider, he had been treated more strictly than many other young aspirants. Mannerheim's superiors apparently valued his qualities, and the fact that he kept the ships under his command in excellent shape and practically made them shine in drills and wargames. In the view of many younger Russian officers, though, Mannerheim was humourless and too straight-laced, an officer who demanded too much from his men. Sometimes this situation caused friction and even hostility between Mannerheim and his subordinates.
In early 1904 Mannerheim's career would reach its erstwhile peak as he was given the command of the brand-new armored cruiser Aurora. In 1905, Mannerheim commanded the ship as it was sent along with the main part of the Russian Baltic Fleet to relieve Port Arthur in the Russo-Japanese War. The ship took part in the Battle of Tsushima, where sixteen men of the ship's crew were killed and Mannerheim himself was gravely wounded. During the battle, the Aurora had temporarily been the flagship of the Finnish-born Rear Admiral Oskar Enkvist, commanding the cruiser detachment.
The Aurora was captured by the Japanese and interned until the end of the war, but with the help of Enkvist, Mannerheim himself could return to St. Petersburg much sooner than most Russian sailors in Japanese hands. He spent a long time recovering and in convalescence, but could return to duty in late 1906 – with a promotion and a high decoration, the Cross of the Order of Saint Anna, earned for his troubles.
In 1908 to 1910, Mannerheim was in command of the cruiser Bogatyr in the Mediterranian and took part, among other things, in the relief action after the great earthquake in Messina in 1908. The thankful Italian government made him a Knight of the Order of the Crown of Italy, and of course he also received some very positive attention in the imperial court back in St. Petersburg. Thus when Mannerheim made it back to the capital in 1910, a promotion to become a Rear Admiral was waiting for him. The officer from the Finnish Grand Duchy was only 43 years of age when he made flag rank: we can well say that his career progress had been nothing short of meteoric. It would also be fair to say that Admiral Teodor Avellán's unwavering support to Mannerheim had been truly crucial for making his swift rise through the ranks possible, despite any real social or military skills Mannerheim undoubtably had.
After a time in the capital, Mannerheim was in 1912 transferred to the Black Sea Fleet where he was made chief of staff to the fleet commander, Admiral Eberhardt. This was the position where we find Rear Admiral Mannerheim at the beginning of the First World War in 1914. In the early months of the war, Mannerheim would have preferred much more active strategy than his highly cautious superior Eberhardt. The relationship between the Admiral and his young chief of staff became one of hostility and recurring heated arguments. The situation improved markedly when in 1915 Eberhardt was replaced by Admiral Kolchak, known as a bolder and more active commander. In 1916, then, Rear Admiral Mannerheim would lead a successful naval operation as the Black Sea Fleet cooperated with the army to take Trebizond from the Ottoman forces. After the well-concluded operation, Mannerheim was awarded the Knight's Cross (1st Class) of the Order of Saint Stanislaus.
Dark clouds were rising, however. In early 1917 also the Black Sea Fleet was taken over by chaotic conditions due to the Russian February Revolution. In June, the revolutionary Russian sailors would commit a murder attempt against Mannerheim who was known as an aristocrat and a counterrevolutionary. The Rear Admiral was attacked as he was inspecting the battleship Imperatritsa Mariya. Luckily, loyal sailors intervened, Mannerheim was only lightly injured, and he was given a leave in Odessa for recuperation. Like his superior, Kolchak, in September Mannerheim was informed by the Provisional Government that he would be moved to the reserve due to his ”inability to adjust politically to the prevailing conditions”.
In October 1917 Mannerheim travelled to Petrograd to seek answers for the situation he found himself in. The timing was unfortunate, as when he arrived he was caught up in the October Revolution and the Bolshevik coup d'etat. With a small knot of other naval officers, Mannerheim was involved in a firefight where he was again injured slightly. Thoroughly frustrated about the chaotic situation in Russia, after this Mannerheim declined when his former superior, Admiral Kolchak, asked him for help for reorganizing the Russian military and returning order in the empire. Mannerheim tendered his resignation and travelled to Finland, the home of his parents. He would arrive in Helsinki in early November 1917.
When Finland then declared its independence on December 3rd 1917, the so-called Liberty Senate of P.E. Svinhufvud appointed Rear Admiral Mannerheim as the commander of the government forces, the ”Finnish White Army”. He was promoted to full Admiral in January. The bitter Finnish Civil War against the Bolshevik-supported Reds would end in a White victory in May 1918. The former Tsarist Admiral felt great antipathy, not to say utter hate, towards the Red rebels and as a matter of course supported heavy-handed justice against the Red prisoners, condoning countless summary executions and not lifting a finger to alleviate horrid conditions in the post-war prison camps where thousands of former Reds (and suspected Reds) would die due to abuse, malnutrition and rampant disease.
Admiral Mannerheim had opposed the decision of the Svinhufvud government to ask help from the German Empire, and he also considered the plan to invite a German king to the Finnish throne as a thoroughly bad idea. Nevertheless, Mannerheim was a royalist at heart, and did not oppose the idea of a Finnish Kingdom in itself. He just would have preferred a monarch from Britain, or from a Nordic royal house to ascend to the throne of the newly independent nation. After Germany lost the war, having to make an armistice with the Allies in early December 1918, the Finnish parliament elected Mannerheim as the Regent of Finland on December 26th 1918.
In 1919 Finland would again face the Red menace in battle. In February, the Regent received a plea for help from his old superior, Admiral Kolchak, who had now achieved a leading position among the Russian White generals. Kolchak promised Mannerheim, who he knew personally as a proud Finnish officer, to accept and recognize Finland's independence if Finland would throw its support on the side of the White forces against the Bolsheviks. The negotiations that took place in the spring months made it clear that also the British and French governments would support a Finnish intervention against the Russian capital. Thus, with all the pieces aligned in the right way, Mannerheim could use his strong position as the Regent and the celebrated commander-in-chief of the victorious Finnish Army to convince the bourgeois, conservative rump parliament of the necessity of the intervention.
In the ”summer manouvers” of 1919, the Finnish (White) Army then advanced against the Bolshevik stronghold of Petrograd at the same time as the Russian Whites kicked off a new general campaign to take both Petrograd and Moscow. The joint campaign was supported by a British naval squadron operating in the Eastern Gulf of Finland.
The campaign got off to a good start, but after some early successes the Bolshevik resistance stiffened closer to the capital itself. July 1919 would turn out to be a month of disasters. The Russian White operations in the Baltic area and in the Far East were unsuccessful, and the Bolsheviks, led by Trotsky, could move more forces to defend Petrograd itself. When the Royal Navy attacked Kronstadt, supported by small Finnish naval units, the aircraft carrier HMS Vindictive struck a floating Russian mine just off Koivisto and sunk quickly. Back in Finland, resistance against the military operation in Russia was growing even among the conservatives. In Helsinki and in Hanko, the Red prisoners in the camps rose up in open rebellion (some say were fomented on Bolshevik orders). Bloody crackdowns ensued. The morale of the Finnish troops taking part in the main attack was deteriorating as supply problems went from bad to worse. The relationship between the Finnish commander-in-chief and General Löfström, commanding the army in the field, deteriorated into an open conflict.
By early September 1919, it was becoming clear that the conquest of Petrograd would not be possible with the available troops. As no help from Finland's erstwhile allies was forthcoming, by the beginning of October even the Regent of Finland had to accept the obvious. The fighting slowly petered out and a de facto armistice fell upon the Finno-Bolshevik front. The peace treaty between Finland and Bolshevik Russia would be eventually signed in Tallinn in June 1920.
Back at home, there was a Red assassination attempt launched against Mannerheim in November, and after this the political right demanded stronger action to ensure order and the rule of law in Finland. In December Mannerheim, seeing himself and the army as the ”last line of defence against chaos”, refused to confirm a new republican constitution drafted by K.J. Ståhlberg. The Admiral would stay on as the Regent of Finland, his rule based on the Swedish Instrument of Government of 1772.
The Mannerheim Regency would continue until 1938. During it, Finland was officially a kingdom with a vacant throne. The Finnish parliament functioned more or less democratically during these two decades, though the omnipresent State Police (VALPO) kept the political left in a tight leash and the Social Democratic Party of Väinö Tanner and his allies was under constant threat of being disbanded permanently if it failed to support the tenuous status quo. In the end, the SDP would only be shut out of two parliamentary elections due to its unacceptable actions. As the end of the 1930s approached, Finland was a politically highly divided nation, even if the Regent could also keep the far right in control, and under the aegis of the Regency similar radical right wing takeovers like in Italy, Germany and Spain could be avoided.
One thing was very close to Admiral Mannerheim's heart, and it was a strong navy. Under the Regency, the Kingdom of Finland built a navy Mannerheim could be proud of. Four Kaleva Class armored coastal cruisers, six Ukonvasama Class destroyers and eight submarines (of Hauki and Ahven Classes) were built at the domestic shipyards. Also a significant force of motor torpedo boats and small minelayers was acquired, with an early effort put into the development of naval aviation. Later, many historians have argued that this massive investment into the Finnish Royal Navy left the army and the air force without commensurate resources. But then it is obvious in hindsight that, in the end, little Finland would have in any case had too little resources to successfully counter the forces the Soviet Union could commit against it when push came to shove – so, the question about where Finland actually would have got the ”best bang for its buck” is probably purely academic.
In the end, the destiny of the Finnish White Admiral was to be killed by one of the repeated attempts against his life by the far left. In 1938, at the military parade in Tampere that was a part of the bidecennial celebrations of the White victory in the War of Liberty, assassins sent from Leningrad managed to plant a bomb under the stand where the Regent stood to receive the massed infantry and tankettes of the Finnish Royal Army, advancing in orderly, grey lines.
The official state funeral in Helsinki was a sight to behold in its serious martial pomp. One of the main thoroughfares of the capital was named in honour of the fallen Regent, and a mausoleum in national romantic style was decided to be built for him along this street. The plans were ordered from the famed architect Lars Sonck. The building would never be finished, however, and the Hietaniemi Cemetery would remain Mannerheim's final resting place.
Instead of an election in parliament for a new Regent, the time was finally ripe for adopting a republican constitution. Before the new constitution was finally accepted by the Eduskunta, however, Finland would have to fight the Soviet Union in the so-called Cold War from October 1939 to January 1940. The war ended in the Peace of Stockholm where Finland, for the while, kept her independence. The new border was drawn along the Kymi River (in a latter-day imitation of the 1721 Treaty of Nystad), and Finland lost her access to the Arctic Sea in Petsamo. Over 200 000 Karelian evacuees had to be resettled by a broken nation. In truth, while the Finns fought with determination, it was only the threat of the Anglo-French intervention that stopped the Soviets from taking Finland over entirely. It has to be said, though, that the threat of an external enemy created a sense of unity among the Finnish people, a feeling sometimes called the Spirit of the Cold War. The wartime leader, (Acting) Regent Tulenheimo, would be elected the first President of Finland in June 1940.
In its foreign policy, Finland was adrift. The pro-German policies of the younger officer corps and the newly legal Kansallisen Voiman Liitto ("The League of National Strength") were at odds with Tulenheimo's and the ”Mannerheimist” officers' Anglo-French preferences. After the attempt to create a defensive alliance with Sweden and Estonia collapsed in May 1940, Finland stood alone. The USSR maintained aggressive, opportunist policies against a Finland that appeared increasingly desperate. In the spring, Hitler's Germany invaded France, and as the New Entente was busy with its own problems, the Red Diarchy in the Palace of the People made their move and invaded Finland and the Baltic states. After the heavy Cold War, Finland had no strength and resources left to mount another desperate struggle for liberty. In what became known as the Midsummer Surrender, President Tulenheimo and Prime Minister Tanner then decided that surrender to the Soviet demands would be the option that would cause the least losses and damages to the nation.
The Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic was proclaimed on 5th November 1940, and the country was now officially a part of the Soviet Union. President Tulenheimo would lead the Finnish Government-in-Exile in the United States until his death in 1951.
Historical speculation about things being different in the past, a game of "what ifs" if you may, has recently become quite popular in Europe. So, let us indulge in some "what ifs" here as well.
Would Finland have seen a different fate in the post-WWI decades without Admiral Mannerheim playing such a prominent role in the nation's history? Would the nation in any case have succumbed to a bona fide authoritarian government just like the other young nations of Eastern Europe, born out of the fire of the Great War, did? Poland had its Pilsudski, Hungary its Horthy. Estonia was led by Päts, Lithuania by Smetona. Only in Czechoslovakia could they create a functional democratic system, but then in comparison to most of the other nations in Eastern Europe, it was a modern and wealthy, economically advanced nation.
Was Mannerheim's past as a naval officer in the Russian Imperial Navy something that shaped his character and actions, or would he have acted in the same way if he was an artillery officer, or not a succesful soldier at all? It is probably safe to say that, due to his past and life experiences, he would have in any case felt hate and even revulsion towards the Red revolutionaries, just like his colleague in the Black Sea Fleet, Admiral Kolchak, did. This would have made his post-WWI actions very similar in any case. Maybe even without Mannerheim it would have been unlikely that Finland would have been able to build a functional democratic system in the interwar period. The existence of both the far left and far right as strong domestic and foreign forces would have made any safe development of representative democracy very tenuous, if not outright impossible. It is also highly unlikely that Finland would have, in any case, been able to keep its independence, sitting there next to the USSR, just a short way away from the Soviet capital of Leningrad.
So, in the final accounting, Admiral Mannerheim did not save Finland from becoming just another small Republic inside the great Soviet state. But could any one person do such a thing, in a realistic scenario? To claim someone could have done it would be, in the opinion of this writer, to indulge in such ”Great Man History” we can justifiably call highly suspect and woefully simplistic.
The White Admiral – Or, the Limits of Great Man History in the Finnish Context
When Finland was a Grand Duchy under the Russian Tsars, many Finns served as soldiers and officers in the imperial Russian armed forces. For the noble families in Finland, military careers were traditional and customary, and after 1809 many of the sons of noble fathers would serve the Emperor of Russia and the Grand Duke of Finland instead of the King of Sweden. In the Imperial Russian Navy, especially, Finnish officers were comparatively over-represented in terms of the small size of the Grand Duchy's population within the empire. The strong Finnish maritime traditions were behind the process that led to thirty officers born in the Grand Duchy to rise into flag rank in the Tsar's naval forces.
Of these men, two stand out above all others. One of them is Oscar von Kraemer, the son of an impoverished noble family who was sent into St. Petersburg to become a soldier, and who rose to the highest military position achieved by a Finlander officer in the Tsarist military: a full admiral, the flag captain and general aide-de-camp to two Tsars, the Chief of Staff of the Imperial Navy, and finally a member of the State Council. The second, of course, is Gustaf Mannerheim, one of the most discussed and controversial of Finland-born soldiers in history. Some call him a hero, the saviour of Finland, and others yet consider him a butcher and a tyrant. When we discuss Finnish naval officers, Mannerheim can't, won't be ignored.
Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim was born in 1867. His father, Count Carl Robert Mannerheim, was an artistic and poetic personality, but he also worked as a businessman and among other things was involved in developing the forest industry in Finland by founding a saw mill in Kuusankoski. After Mannerheim's business ventures ended in a personal bankruptcy in 1878, though, he was forced to accept a position in looking after the interests of the von Julin family in St. Petersburg – his wife Hedvig was a von Julin, and this arrangement was agreed upon to save Hedvig Mannerheim and her children from financial and social ruination. Carl Robert had heavily anti-Russian views himself, and thus his destiny contained a fair bit of irony. Only four years after the family's arrival to Russia, in 1882, Carl Robert died in a traffic accident, his skull crushed by an oncoming coach with an out-of-control team of horses, and his wife Hedvig was left without financial support – the very thing the family's relocation to the Russian capital was meant to prevent. The young widow had no less than seven children.
Young Gustaf Mannerheim, who had already started his schooling in St. Petersburg, was sent to join the Naval Cadet Corps of the Imperial Russian Navy in 1884 – at the age of 16. Hedvig Mannerheim was helped in this decision by a Finland-born officer in the Russian military, Major General Johan Alexander Berg whom Hedvig had met in 1882 when he became the director of the military hospital at Peterhof. Young Gustaf didn't much care for the conditions he had landed in at the military school, especially as he was older than most of the other cadets and thus found it hard to fit in. He even considered leaving the school and going absent without leave, to make his way to Finland in protest of his mother's decision for his career. In the end, though, his sense of duty and love and worry for his mother and siblings won out.
Young Mannerheim had a rough time in the Cadet Corps. He found it hard to get used to military discipline, and especially learning even passable Russian was difficult for him. In 1893, though, despite everything, Mannerheim graduated from the Cadet Corps with middling grades and was given his first commission in the Russian Baltic Fleet in the rank of Midshipman. The first vessel he would serve on would be the old monitor Rusalka, then serving as a training hulk.
Mannerheim's early military career was helped by the fact that at the time the chief of staff of the Kronstadt military port was the Finnish-born Rear Admiral Teodor Avellán. The young Finnish officer was soon noticed by Avellán, a man who had made something of a name for himself in high-profile positions, and the Rear Admiral strived to help Mannerheim along in his career. This kind of a system of nationality-based patronage was something that was commonly used in the Russian military by Finnish officers who knew that without it, their younger countrymen, especially those from less affluent families, would end up in a disadvantage in comparison to ethnically Russian officers who had patronage systems of their own – whether or not they had the practical military skills and aptitude needed to work as an officer in the Tsar's forces. In 1896 Avellán ascended to the prestigious position of the Chief of Staff of the entire Navy, and this meant that his support was vitally important for Gustaf Mannerheim.
Mannerheim was made Lieutenant in 1895 and he received his first command, the torpedo boat (”torpedo cruiser”) Posadnik. The same year Mannerheim also married Anastasia Arapova, the heiress of the fortune previously belonging to the wealthy Major General Nikolai Arapov. Anastasia was five years older than her new husband. Two children were born to the couple: the son Carl (1897) and the daughter Anastasie (1898). The marriage, however, was generally unhappy and practically ended in a separation in 1904. From Gustaf Mannerheim's point of view, it had always been a marriage of convenience: the Arapov fortune allowed him to pay off the debts that he had incurred maintaining his status as a young, noble and dashing naval officer in St. Petersburg. During the marriage, Mannerheim had numerous other romantic relationships with young women.
In 1898 Mannerheim was promoted to Senior Lieutenant and given command of the torpedo destroyer Sokol. Gustaf Mannerheim's career got a significant boost from Admiral Avellán's support and protection, and thus in the year 1900 we already find him as a Captain 2nd Rank. The following year, he was given the command of a cruiser. The Vityaz was already somewhat long in the tooth, but for a young, ambitious officer it was an important command, and a good stepping-stone for the future.
On the vessels Mannerheim commanded he was known as an aristocratic officer who knew his own considerable value. He would not tolerate mistakes by his subordinates and he maintained strict discipline. This all of course hewed back to his studies and experiences at the Naval Cadet Corps where, as a comparative outsider, he had been treated more strictly than many other young aspirants. Mannerheim's superiors apparently valued his qualities, and the fact that he kept the ships under his command in excellent shape and practically made them shine in drills and wargames. In the view of many younger Russian officers, though, Mannerheim was humourless and too straight-laced, an officer who demanded too much from his men. Sometimes this situation caused friction and even hostility between Mannerheim and his subordinates.
In early 1904 Mannerheim's career would reach its erstwhile peak as he was given the command of the brand-new armored cruiser Aurora. In 1905, Mannerheim commanded the ship as it was sent along with the main part of the Russian Baltic Fleet to relieve Port Arthur in the Russo-Japanese War. The ship took part in the Battle of Tsushima, where sixteen men of the ship's crew were killed and Mannerheim himself was gravely wounded. During the battle, the Aurora had temporarily been the flagship of the Finnish-born Rear Admiral Oskar Enkvist, commanding the cruiser detachment.
The Aurora was captured by the Japanese and interned until the end of the war, but with the help of Enkvist, Mannerheim himself could return to St. Petersburg much sooner than most Russian sailors in Japanese hands. He spent a long time recovering and in convalescence, but could return to duty in late 1906 – with a promotion and a high decoration, the Cross of the Order of Saint Anna, earned for his troubles.
In 1908 to 1910, Mannerheim was in command of the cruiser Bogatyr in the Mediterranian and took part, among other things, in the relief action after the great earthquake in Messina in 1908. The thankful Italian government made him a Knight of the Order of the Crown of Italy, and of course he also received some very positive attention in the imperial court back in St. Petersburg. Thus when Mannerheim made it back to the capital in 1910, a promotion to become a Rear Admiral was waiting for him. The officer from the Finnish Grand Duchy was only 43 years of age when he made flag rank: we can well say that his career progress had been nothing short of meteoric. It would also be fair to say that Admiral Teodor Avellán's unwavering support to Mannerheim had been truly crucial for making his swift rise through the ranks possible, despite any real social or military skills Mannerheim undoubtably had.
After a time in the capital, Mannerheim was in 1912 transferred to the Black Sea Fleet where he was made chief of staff to the fleet commander, Admiral Eberhardt. This was the position where we find Rear Admiral Mannerheim at the beginning of the First World War in 1914. In the early months of the war, Mannerheim would have preferred much more active strategy than his highly cautious superior Eberhardt. The relationship between the Admiral and his young chief of staff became one of hostility and recurring heated arguments. The situation improved markedly when in 1915 Eberhardt was replaced by Admiral Kolchak, known as a bolder and more active commander. In 1916, then, Rear Admiral Mannerheim would lead a successful naval operation as the Black Sea Fleet cooperated with the army to take Trebizond from the Ottoman forces. After the well-concluded operation, Mannerheim was awarded the Knight's Cross (1st Class) of the Order of Saint Stanislaus.
Dark clouds were rising, however. In early 1917 also the Black Sea Fleet was taken over by chaotic conditions due to the Russian February Revolution. In June, the revolutionary Russian sailors would commit a murder attempt against Mannerheim who was known as an aristocrat and a counterrevolutionary. The Rear Admiral was attacked as he was inspecting the battleship Imperatritsa Mariya. Luckily, loyal sailors intervened, Mannerheim was only lightly injured, and he was given a leave in Odessa for recuperation. Like his superior, Kolchak, in September Mannerheim was informed by the Provisional Government that he would be moved to the reserve due to his ”inability to adjust politically to the prevailing conditions”.
In October 1917 Mannerheim travelled to Petrograd to seek answers for the situation he found himself in. The timing was unfortunate, as when he arrived he was caught up in the October Revolution and the Bolshevik coup d'etat. With a small knot of other naval officers, Mannerheim was involved in a firefight where he was again injured slightly. Thoroughly frustrated about the chaotic situation in Russia, after this Mannerheim declined when his former superior, Admiral Kolchak, asked him for help for reorganizing the Russian military and returning order in the empire. Mannerheim tendered his resignation and travelled to Finland, the home of his parents. He would arrive in Helsinki in early November 1917.
When Finland then declared its independence on December 3rd 1917, the so-called Liberty Senate of P.E. Svinhufvud appointed Rear Admiral Mannerheim as the commander of the government forces, the ”Finnish White Army”. He was promoted to full Admiral in January. The bitter Finnish Civil War against the Bolshevik-supported Reds would end in a White victory in May 1918. The former Tsarist Admiral felt great antipathy, not to say utter hate, towards the Red rebels and as a matter of course supported heavy-handed justice against the Red prisoners, condoning countless summary executions and not lifting a finger to alleviate horrid conditions in the post-war prison camps where thousands of former Reds (and suspected Reds) would die due to abuse, malnutrition and rampant disease.
Admiral Mannerheim had opposed the decision of the Svinhufvud government to ask help from the German Empire, and he also considered the plan to invite a German king to the Finnish throne as a thoroughly bad idea. Nevertheless, Mannerheim was a royalist at heart, and did not oppose the idea of a Finnish Kingdom in itself. He just would have preferred a monarch from Britain, or from a Nordic royal house to ascend to the throne of the newly independent nation. After Germany lost the war, having to make an armistice with the Allies in early December 1918, the Finnish parliament elected Mannerheim as the Regent of Finland on December 26th 1918.
In 1919 Finland would again face the Red menace in battle. In February, the Regent received a plea for help from his old superior, Admiral Kolchak, who had now achieved a leading position among the Russian White generals. Kolchak promised Mannerheim, who he knew personally as a proud Finnish officer, to accept and recognize Finland's independence if Finland would throw its support on the side of the White forces against the Bolsheviks. The negotiations that took place in the spring months made it clear that also the British and French governments would support a Finnish intervention against the Russian capital. Thus, with all the pieces aligned in the right way, Mannerheim could use his strong position as the Regent and the celebrated commander-in-chief of the victorious Finnish Army to convince the bourgeois, conservative rump parliament of the necessity of the intervention.
In the ”summer manouvers” of 1919, the Finnish (White) Army then advanced against the Bolshevik stronghold of Petrograd at the same time as the Russian Whites kicked off a new general campaign to take both Petrograd and Moscow. The joint campaign was supported by a British naval squadron operating in the Eastern Gulf of Finland.
The campaign got off to a good start, but after some early successes the Bolshevik resistance stiffened closer to the capital itself. July 1919 would turn out to be a month of disasters. The Russian White operations in the Baltic area and in the Far East were unsuccessful, and the Bolsheviks, led by Trotsky, could move more forces to defend Petrograd itself. When the Royal Navy attacked Kronstadt, supported by small Finnish naval units, the aircraft carrier HMS Vindictive struck a floating Russian mine just off Koivisto and sunk quickly. Back in Finland, resistance against the military operation in Russia was growing even among the conservatives. In Helsinki and in Hanko, the Red prisoners in the camps rose up in open rebellion (some say were fomented on Bolshevik orders). Bloody crackdowns ensued. The morale of the Finnish troops taking part in the main attack was deteriorating as supply problems went from bad to worse. The relationship between the Finnish commander-in-chief and General Löfström, commanding the army in the field, deteriorated into an open conflict.
By early September 1919, it was becoming clear that the conquest of Petrograd would not be possible with the available troops. As no help from Finland's erstwhile allies was forthcoming, by the beginning of October even the Regent of Finland had to accept the obvious. The fighting slowly petered out and a de facto armistice fell upon the Finno-Bolshevik front. The peace treaty between Finland and Bolshevik Russia would be eventually signed in Tallinn in June 1920.
Back at home, there was a Red assassination attempt launched against Mannerheim in November, and after this the political right demanded stronger action to ensure order and the rule of law in Finland. In December Mannerheim, seeing himself and the army as the ”last line of defence against chaos”, refused to confirm a new republican constitution drafted by K.J. Ståhlberg. The Admiral would stay on as the Regent of Finland, his rule based on the Swedish Instrument of Government of 1772.
The Mannerheim Regency would continue until 1938. During it, Finland was officially a kingdom with a vacant throne. The Finnish parliament functioned more or less democratically during these two decades, though the omnipresent State Police (VALPO) kept the political left in a tight leash and the Social Democratic Party of Väinö Tanner and his allies was under constant threat of being disbanded permanently if it failed to support the tenuous status quo. In the end, the SDP would only be shut out of two parliamentary elections due to its unacceptable actions. As the end of the 1930s approached, Finland was a politically highly divided nation, even if the Regent could also keep the far right in control, and under the aegis of the Regency similar radical right wing takeovers like in Italy, Germany and Spain could be avoided.
One thing was very close to Admiral Mannerheim's heart, and it was a strong navy. Under the Regency, the Kingdom of Finland built a navy Mannerheim could be proud of. Four Kaleva Class armored coastal cruisers, six Ukonvasama Class destroyers and eight submarines (of Hauki and Ahven Classes) were built at the domestic shipyards. Also a significant force of motor torpedo boats and small minelayers was acquired, with an early effort put into the development of naval aviation. Later, many historians have argued that this massive investment into the Finnish Royal Navy left the army and the air force without commensurate resources. But then it is obvious in hindsight that, in the end, little Finland would have in any case had too little resources to successfully counter the forces the Soviet Union could commit against it when push came to shove – so, the question about where Finland actually would have got the ”best bang for its buck” is probably purely academic.
In the end, the destiny of the Finnish White Admiral was to be killed by one of the repeated attempts against his life by the far left. In 1938, at the military parade in Tampere that was a part of the bidecennial celebrations of the White victory in the War of Liberty, assassins sent from Leningrad managed to plant a bomb under the stand where the Regent stood to receive the massed infantry and tankettes of the Finnish Royal Army, advancing in orderly, grey lines.
The official state funeral in Helsinki was a sight to behold in its serious martial pomp. One of the main thoroughfares of the capital was named in honour of the fallen Regent, and a mausoleum in national romantic style was decided to be built for him along this street. The plans were ordered from the famed architect Lars Sonck. The building would never be finished, however, and the Hietaniemi Cemetery would remain Mannerheim's final resting place.
Instead of an election in parliament for a new Regent, the time was finally ripe for adopting a republican constitution. Before the new constitution was finally accepted by the Eduskunta, however, Finland would have to fight the Soviet Union in the so-called Cold War from October 1939 to January 1940. The war ended in the Peace of Stockholm where Finland, for the while, kept her independence. The new border was drawn along the Kymi River (in a latter-day imitation of the 1721 Treaty of Nystad), and Finland lost her access to the Arctic Sea in Petsamo. Over 200 000 Karelian evacuees had to be resettled by a broken nation. In truth, while the Finns fought with determination, it was only the threat of the Anglo-French intervention that stopped the Soviets from taking Finland over entirely. It has to be said, though, that the threat of an external enemy created a sense of unity among the Finnish people, a feeling sometimes called the Spirit of the Cold War. The wartime leader, (Acting) Regent Tulenheimo, would be elected the first President of Finland in June 1940.
In its foreign policy, Finland was adrift. The pro-German policies of the younger officer corps and the newly legal Kansallisen Voiman Liitto ("The League of National Strength") were at odds with Tulenheimo's and the ”Mannerheimist” officers' Anglo-French preferences. After the attempt to create a defensive alliance with Sweden and Estonia collapsed in May 1940, Finland stood alone. The USSR maintained aggressive, opportunist policies against a Finland that appeared increasingly desperate. In the spring, Hitler's Germany invaded France, and as the New Entente was busy with its own problems, the Red Diarchy in the Palace of the People made their move and invaded Finland and the Baltic states. After the heavy Cold War, Finland had no strength and resources left to mount another desperate struggle for liberty. In what became known as the Midsummer Surrender, President Tulenheimo and Prime Minister Tanner then decided that surrender to the Soviet demands would be the option that would cause the least losses and damages to the nation.
The Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic was proclaimed on 5th November 1940, and the country was now officially a part of the Soviet Union. President Tulenheimo would lead the Finnish Government-in-Exile in the United States until his death in 1951.
Historical speculation about things being different in the past, a game of "what ifs" if you may, has recently become quite popular in Europe. So, let us indulge in some "what ifs" here as well.
Would Finland have seen a different fate in the post-WWI decades without Admiral Mannerheim playing such a prominent role in the nation's history? Would the nation in any case have succumbed to a bona fide authoritarian government just like the other young nations of Eastern Europe, born out of the fire of the Great War, did? Poland had its Pilsudski, Hungary its Horthy. Estonia was led by Päts, Lithuania by Smetona. Only in Czechoslovakia could they create a functional democratic system, but then in comparison to most of the other nations in Eastern Europe, it was a modern and wealthy, economically advanced nation.
Was Mannerheim's past as a naval officer in the Russian Imperial Navy something that shaped his character and actions, or would he have acted in the same way if he was an artillery officer, or not a succesful soldier at all? It is probably safe to say that, due to his past and life experiences, he would have in any case felt hate and even revulsion towards the Red revolutionaries, just like his colleague in the Black Sea Fleet, Admiral Kolchak, did. This would have made his post-WWI actions very similar in any case. Maybe even without Mannerheim it would have been unlikely that Finland would have been able to build a functional democratic system in the interwar period. The existence of both the far left and far right as strong domestic and foreign forces would have made any safe development of representative democracy very tenuous, if not outright impossible. It is also highly unlikely that Finland would have, in any case, been able to keep its independence, sitting there next to the USSR, just a short way away from the Soviet capital of Leningrad.
So, in the final accounting, Admiral Mannerheim did not save Finland from becoming just another small Republic inside the great Soviet state. But could any one person do such a thing, in a realistic scenario? To claim someone could have done it would be, in the opinion of this writer, to indulge in such ”Great Man History” we can justifiably call highly suspect and woefully simplistic.
Last edited:
