Germans land on the Åland Islands

On 5 March 1918, after a crossing of several days through the Baltic ice, the German squadron of Rear Admiral Hugo Meurer arrived off Eckerö, at the western end of the Åland Islands. On board the dreadnoughts Westfalen and Rheinland (of the Nassau class) came the Mecklenburg 14th Jäger Battalion of Major August Schenck zu Schweinsberg, a little over a thousand men. A British chronology of the war records the landing under 2 March and the notification of the Swedish government of the occupation of the islands under 3 March, but according to German, Finnish and Swedish sources the ships did not arrive until the morning of 5 March, and the islands passed under German control over the following three days. Formally the Germans came at the request of the Finnish government in Vaasa. In practice they were seizing a springboard for intervention in the Finnish civil war and did not want Sweden to keep the archipelago.

The Swedes first

The Åland Islands, inhabited by a Swedish-speaking population, lie at the entrance to the Gulf of Bothnia, not far from Stockholm. After the Crimean War the Treaty of Paris had forbidden their fortification, but during the war Russia, with its allies’ consent, had built coastal batteries and airfields there. When Finland declared independence, about two thousand mutinous Russian soldiers were stationed on the islands, and the inhabitants were collecting signatures for a petition for union with Sweden. In February the civil war reached the archipelago. A White detachment from the Uusikaupunki area crossed over the ice from the mainland and on 17 February defeated the Russians and Reds at Godby. Meanwhile the Swedish government of Hjalmar Branting sent ships to protect the population and mediate between the combatants. Around 15 February the coastal defence ship Thor appeared off the islands, and on 24–25 February a battalion of the Göta Life Guards landed at Eckerö. The Whites were persuaded to leave the islands, and the Russians agreed to evacuate. The government in Vaasa protested, because it suspected the Swedes of intending annexation.

The German response

The Swedish expedition hastened German plans. As early as 13 February a crown council at Bad Homburg had decided to intervene in Finland, and in Berlin the representative of the Finnish Senate, Edvard Hjelt, submitted a request for help “in the name of the Finnish people and state”. According to Finnish researchers, the Senate’s request for the occupation of the Åland Islands themselves reached Berlin on 22 February. The Germans decided first to take control of the archipelago, so as to have a base and a safe route to the west coast of Finland. Emperor Wilhelm II explained in a telegram to the Swedish queen that the logistics of the expedition required it. Stockholm, unable to risk war, instructed its commander on the spot not to resist.

Meurer’s squadron, numbering some thirty vessels including transports, minesweepers, an icebreaker and a hospital ship, sailed from Danzig at the end of February. Heavy ice forced it to abandon the plan to land at Lemland and to head for Eckerö, where Swedish ships were already lying. German and Swedish sources differ as to when the troops went ashore: according to some it began on 5 March, according to others only on 7 March, after talks with the Swedes. The two sides agreed on a division of the islands. A small Swedish detachment remained in Mariehamn, and the Germans occupied the rest of the archipelago. The hoisting of the German naval ensign on the customs house at Eckerö provoked a wave of indignation in Sweden.

What came next

The Germans took between 1,000 and 1,200 Russians prisoner and shipped them to Libau. On 9 March the German icebreaker Hindenburg sank on a mine off Eckerö. The Swedes began to withdraw in mid-March, although the last soldiers did not leave the islands until late spring. Because of the ice the Germans gave up the idea of landing on the west coast of Finland, and at the beginning of April their Baltic Division under General Rüdiger von der Goltz landed at Hanko. The question of the islands’ ownership, disputed between Finland and Sweden, returned after the war. In 1921 the League of Nations awarded them to Finland, with a guarantee of autonomy and demilitarisation.