End of the Finnish Civil War

In the first week of May 1918 the last Red Guard units capitulated in the valley of the Kymijoki, on the eastern edge of southern Finland. So ended the Finnish Civil War, which had begun at the end of January. The British chronology of the war records under 7 May the capture of Hamina (Fredrikshamn) by the White Guard and adds: “end of Finnish civil war”. Finnish studies give slightly earlier dates. According to them the Whites took Hamina and neighbouring Kotka as early as 4 May, almost without a fight, and the last 800 or so Reds laid down their arms on 5 May at Ahvenkoski, before the Germans. The formal end of the war is usually taken to be 15 May, when the Whites took over Fort Ino on the Karelian Isthmus from the Russians.

The last days of Red Finland

After the fall of Vyborg on 29 April the Reds had neither leaders nor a road to Russia. Kullervo Manner’s revolutionary government fled to Petrograd, and thousands of Red Guards with their families, who had been moving east from Tampere, Hämeenlinna and the surrounding area, were surrounded by the Germans and the Whites. Long columns of refugees surrendered on 1 and 2 May between Lahti and Koski. The Reds called this route the “road of tears”; for the Whites the sight of thousands of enemies trailing east was a moment of triumph.

The last scrap of Red Finland was the valley of the lower Kymijoki. The command of the central front was still thinking on 2 May of breaking through to the east, but the Red Guards no longer wanted to fight, and the staff in Kotka favoured capitulation. On 3 May the Whites entered Kouvola. On the night of 3/4 May the Reds at Inkeroinen handed over their weapons to Whites who had arrived there by train, which opened the way to the coast. That same day the Whites took Kotka, where according to Finnish studies about 4,000 Reds surrendered, and Hamina. Some commanders sought safety at sea. Aleksei Osipov, an able commander from Kuusankoski whom the Reds called the “Mannerheim of Voikkaa”, waited in vain with his fiancée, the nurse Maija Rasilainen, on an islet off Hamina for a ship carrying refugees. When a boat of a White patrol approached the island, they both took their own lives.

The last point of resistance held out in the municipality of Pyhtää, on the Kymijoki near Ahvenkoski. Facing the Reds there since April stood the German detachment of Colonel Otto von Brandenstein, which at the beginning of April had landed on the coast east of Helsinki. Talks on capitulation had begun as early as 3 May. The Germans promised that rank-and-file men who handed over their weapons would be released and only the commanders detained. The deadline expired at six in the evening on 5 May, but at about noon the Red Guards lined up by companies behind their chief of staff, Oskar Vinter, who carried a white flag, and laid down their arms at the Rajasilta bridge. The promise was not kept. The Whites took over the prisoners and sent them to camps, and shot the staff, company commanders and labour activists in the ruins of the Svartholm fortress near Loviisa. According to Finnish historians, in the week after the capitulation the Whites executed nearly 300 Red Guards in the Kymenlaakso region.

Ino and the parade

The fighting was over, but the Russians still stood on the Karelian Isthmus. Fort Ino, one of the batteries covering Petrograd from the sea, had long been a matter of dispute, because the Finns regarded it as part of their country. On 14 May, after a Finnish ultimatum, the Russian garrison left the fort and blew up its fortifications. On 15 May the Whites occupied the ruins, and General Carl Gustaf Mannerheim announced that the war was over.

A day later, on 16 May, Mannerheim led a great victory parade through Helsinki in which, according to Finnish studies, about 12,000 soldiers took part. It was also a political demonstration. The capital had been taken by the Germans in April, and at the beginning of May it was a German guard of honour and General Rüdiger von der Goltz who welcomed the Senate returning from Vaasa (Finnish studies give 2 or 4 May). Mannerheim wanted to show that the war had been won by the Finnish “peasant army”. The Germans did not march in the parade, although von der Goltz was among the guests of honour, and a prominent place was given to the Swedish Brigade, made up of Swedish volunteers. In the Senate building Mannerheim addressed the Senate of Pehr Evind Svinhufvud, demanding a strong and independent position for the army.

The toll

The war lasted three and a half months, and its toll was terrible. According to the Finnish National Archives’ database of war victims of 1914–1922, about 36,600 people died in connection with the war of 1918, more than one per cent of the country’s population: about 27,000 Reds, more than 5,000 Whites and about 4,400 others, including Russians. About 9,400 were killed in action, including about 5,200 Reds and 3,400 Whites. A similar number, about 9,700, died in executions and murders. According to the database more than 7,000 Reds fell victim to the White terror (other estimates reach 10,000), and about 1,400 Whites to the Red terror. The executions peaked at the turn of April and May, when according to Finnish researchers about two hundred people a day were being shot.

Most of the victims, however, were still to come. When the fighting ended, according to Finnish studies, about 76,000 Reds were held in prison camps. The largest of them, on Suomenlinna and at Hämeenlinna, Lahti and Vyborg, each held well over ten thousand prisoners in the summer. In May about 600–700 people died there, and in the following months, as famine gripped the country, thousands a month. In all, nearly 12,000 Reds died of hunger and disease in the camps, and with other prisoners more than 13,000. Several hundred more died soon after release. Special courts for crimes against the state, set up by a law of 29 May, dealt with about 76,000 cases. About 10,000 Reds with their families fled to Soviet Russia.

What came next

The victory of the Whites decided that Finland would remain independent, but for the time being it found itself in Germany’s orbit. The peace with the Reich of March tied it economically to Berlin, and von der Goltz’s German division stayed in the country until December. On 18 May parliament, from which almost the whole left had vanished, elected Svinhufvud regent, and at the end of the month power passed to the monarchist Senate of Juho Paasikivi. Mannerheim, opposed to subordinating the army to the Germans, resigned as commander-in-chief. In the autumn parliament elected the German prince Frederick Charles of Hesse King of Finland, but Germany’s defeat put an end to the plan and Finland became a republic. The division into “Whites” and “Reds”, entrenched in the prison camps, weighed on the country for generations.