Germans leave Finland

On the morning of 16 December 1918 two ships, the Bahia Castillo and the Buenos Aires, sailed from the port of Helsinki. They carried the last units of the German Baltic Division (Ostsee-Division), which had landed at Hanko in April and helped the Whites win the civil war. In his memoirs General Rüdiger von der Goltz lists Colonel von Tschirschky’s two Guard Uhlan regiments, a battery, a squadron of the 3rd Cuirassier Regiment, and the staff and military mission. According to von der Goltz, some 25,000 people saw them off on the quay, according to Finnish historians about 20,000, among them the country’s political and military leaders. Ministers of the new government also came to the general’s ship to thank him for German help. The British chronology of the war records on this day: “last German troops leave Finland”.

The departure was hastened by Germany’s defeat. Of the division, which in the spring had numbered some 12,000 men, by the autumn, as von der Goltz wrote, only a few battalions and batteries remained. When news of the revolution in Kiel and Berlin reached Finland in November, the sailors of the German warships lying in Finnish ports formed soldiers’ councils of their own. Von der Goltz had them sent home, and unease grew among the remaining soldiers, since from January the ice could close the sea route home. A few days after the parade of 12 November the general declared before the Finnish Senate that his troops were loyal and ready to defend themselves, but should not meet the British in Finland. For this reason, in agreement with the German minister, he proposed their immediate return.

The victorious Entente demanded that German influence in Finland be ended. Paasikivi’s government resigned at the end of November, and although the new cabinet wanted to keep German instructors in the Finnish army, the Allies would not agree. On 6 December, at their demand, the German chief of staff of the Finnish army, Colonel von Redern, resigned, and other officers had to follow him. Individual German officers left Finland only in January 1919. The government also declared void the trade agreements with Germany that in the spring had made the Finnish economy dependent on the Reich.

The general’s ship reached Stettin. For von der Goltz’s soldiers the war was not over. The Guard Uhlans came under the orders of the command in Berlin and, according to von der Goltz, were soon drawn into fighting against revolutionary sailors. In February 1919 the general himself took command of German volunteer units in Latvia and began fighting the Bolsheviks on the Baltic.