Fcw 100 years / Russian-German second fagreement 1918

The major reasons for rising political tensions among Finns were the autocratic rule of the Russian czar and the undemocratic class system of the estates of the realm. The latter system originated in the regime of the Swedish Empire that preceded Russian governance and divided the Finnish people economically, socially and politically. 

Finland's population grew rapidly in the nineteenth century (from 860,000 in 1810 to 3,130,000 in 1917) and a class of agrarian and industrial workers, as well as peasants emerged over the period. The Industrial Revolution was rapid in Finland, though it started later than in the rest of Western Europe. 

Industrialisation was financed by the state and some of the social problems associated with the industrial process were diminished by the administration's actions. Among urban workers, socio-economic problems steepened during periods of industrial depression. The position of rural workers worsened after the end of the nineteenth century, as farming became more efficient and market-oriented and the development of industry was not vigorous enough to fully utilise the rapid population growth of the countryside.

Various rifles used in the Finnish civil war with bayonets in Mikkeli Infantry museum.. From the top:
1.)  Russian 7.62 mm Mosin-Nagant m/91
2.) Japanese 6.5 mm Type 38 (Arisaka m/1905)
3.)  German 7.92 mm Mauser m/1898
4.)  American 7.62 mm Winchester m/1895

 Revolutionary Russian servicemen of various political groups added to the feeling of the instability during 1917.

Some 400 Swedes fought with the White forces during the Finnish Civil War 

(so called "Swedish Brigade"). 

The Swedish Army also invaded Åland Islands during the war.

                               Redhead (chief) Verner Lehtimäki

                                      Jaeger Battalion

The difference between Scandinavian-Finnish (Finno-Ugric peoples) and Russian-Slavic culture affected the nature of Finnish national integration. The upper social strata took the lead and gained domestic authority from the Russian czar in 1809. 

The estates planned to build up an increasingly autonomous Finnish state, led by the elite and the intelligentsia. The Fennoman movement aimed to include the common people in a non-political role; the labour movement, youth associations and the temperance movement were initially led "from above".

Between 1870 and 1916 industrialisation gradually improved social conditions and the self-confidence of workers, but while the standard of living of the common people rose in absolute terms, the rift between rich and poor deepened markedly. 

The commoners' rising awareness of socio-economic and political questions interacted with the ideas of socialism, social liberalism and nationalism. 

The workers' initiatives and the corresponding responses of the dominant authorities intensified social conflict in Finland

Finnish Civil War
Part of World War I, Revolutions of 1917–1923
Tampere's civilian buildings destroyed in the Civil War
Date 27 January – 15 May 1918 (3 months, 2 weeks and 4 days) Location Finland Result Victory of the Finnish Whites German hegemony until November 1918 Division in Finnish society
Belligerents
Finnish Whites  German Empire Swedish, Estonian, Polishvolunteers	Finnish Reds  Soviet Russia
Commanders and leaders
C. G. E. Mannerheim  Hannes Ignatius  Ernst Linder  Ernst Löfström  Martin Wetzer  Karl Wilkman  Rüdiger von der Goltz  Hans von Tschirsky und von Bögendorff  Konrad Wolf  Otto von Brandenstein  Hugo Meurer  Hjalmar Frisell  Harald Hjalmarson  Hans Kalm  Stanislaw Prus-Boguslawski	Ali Aaltonen  Eero Haapalainen  Eino Rahja  Adolf Taimi  Evert Eloranta  Kullervo Manner  August Wesley  Hugo Salmela  Heikki Kaljunen  Fredrik Johansson  Verner Lehtimäki  Konstantin Yeremejev  Mikhail Svechnikov  Georgij Bulatsel
Strength
White Guards 80,000–90,000 Jägers 1,450 Imperial German Army14,000 Swedish Brigade 1,000 Estonian volunteers Polish Legion 1,737	Red Guards 80,000–90,000 (2,600 women) Former Russian Imperial Army 7,000–10,000
Casualties and losses
Whites 3,500 killed in action 1,650 executed 46 missing 4 POW deaths Swedes 55 killed in action Germans 450–500 killed in action Total 5,700–5,800 casualties (100–200 neutral/"White" civilians)	Reds 5,700 killed in action 10,000 executed 1,150 missing 12,500 POWs deceased, 700 acute deaths after release Russians 800–900 killed in action 1,600 executed Total 32,500 casualties (100–200 neutral/"Red" civilians)

The territory of the Kingdom of Poland was not mentioned in the treaty, because Russian Poland had been a personal possession of the Tsar, not part of the Empire.

The Russians only hopes were that given time their allies would agree to join the negotiations or that the western European proletariat would revolt, so their best strategy was to prolong the negotiations. As Foreign Minister Leon Trotsky wrote "To delay negotiations, there must be someone to do the delaying".  Therefore Trotsky replaced Joffe as the leader.

Relations between Russia and the victors did not go smoothly. The Ottoman Empire broke the treaty by invading the newly created First Republic of Armenia in May 1918. Joffe became the Russian ambassador to Germany. His priority was distributing propaganda to trigger the German revolution. On 4 November 1918 "the Soviet courier's packing-case had 'come to pieces'" in a Berlin railway station;  it was filled with insurrectionary documents. Joffe and his staff were ejected from Germany in a sealed train on 5 November 1918. 



In the Armistice of 11 November 1918 that ended World War I, one clause abrogated the Brest-Litovsk treaty. Next the Bolshevik legislature (VTsIK) annulled the treaty on 13 November 1918, and the text of the VTsIK Decision was printed in Pravda newspaper the next day. In the year after the armistice following a timetable set by the victors the German Army withdrew its occupying forces from the lands gained in Brest-Litovsk. The fate of the region, and the location of the eventual western border of the Soviet Union, was settled in violent and chaotic struggles over the course of the next three and a half years. The Polish–Soviet War was particularly bitter; it ended with the Treaty of Riga in 1921.

Although most of Ukraine fell under Bolshevik control and eventually became one of the constituent republics of the Soviet Union, Poland and the Baltic states emerged as independent countries. 

In the Treaty of Rapallo, concluded in April 1922, Germany accepted the Treaty's nullification, and the two powers agreed to abandon all war-related territorial and financial claims against each other. This state of affairs lasted until 1939. 

As a consequence of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the Soviet Union advanced its borders westward by invading Poland in September 1939 and taking a small part of Finland in November 1939 and annexing the Baltic States, Eastern Poland and Bessarabia in 1940. 

It thus overturned almost all the territorial losses incurred at Brest-Litovsk, except for the main part of Finland, western Congress Poland, and western Armenia.

Åland (Oland) Invasion / Fcw 100 years

The Invasion of Åland was a 1918 military campaign of World War I in the Åland Islands, Finland. The islands occupied by Russian troops were first invaded by Sweden in late February and then by the German Empire in early March. The conflict was also related to the Finnish Civil War including minor fighting between the Finnish Whites and the Finnish Reds.

As Germany took control over Åland in March 1918, the Russian troops were captured and the Swedish troops left the islands by the end of the Finnish Civil War in May. The Germans stayed in Åland until September 1918. The Åland Islands dispute was then turned over to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 and the League of Nations in 1920. 
The Åland convention was finally signed in 1921 re-establishing the demilitarised status of Åland as an autonomous part of Finland

                      
                      Swedish troops disarming the Russians in Degerby village

The Åland Islands are located in the northern Baltic Sea between Sweden and Finland. The population is Swedish-speaking, but after the 1809 Treaty of Fredrikshamn the islands were ceded to the Russian Empire together with a vast majority of the Finnish-speaking areas of Sweden. In the 1856 Treaty of Paris, settling the Crimean War, the Åland Islands were demilitarised. As the World War I broke out in 1914, the Russian Empire turned the islands into a submarine base for the use of British and Russian navies. On 25 July 1916, the German airship SL9 attacked the port of Mariehamn and bombed the boats of the Russian 5th submarine squadron and the mothership Svjatitel Nikolai, resulting the death of 7 Russian sailors.

The Russian government also started building fortifications, in agreement with their allies France and Great Britain, in order to prevent the German invasion. Åland Islands were fortified with 10 coastal artillery batteries, several garrisons, docks and two airfields. Sweden, however, considered the structures too heavy for just defending the islands. The government feared a possible attack from Åland, and saw the neutral country was pressured to join the Allied Powers

Ahvenanmaan miehitys

Invasion of Åland
Part of World War I and Finnish Civil War
Swedish, German and Russian soldiers in Åland
Date 15 February – September 1918 Location Åland Islands, Finland
Belligerents
RSFSR  Reds	Sweden	Germany  Whites
Commanders and leaders
Central Committee of the Baltic Fleet  Harry Borg †	C. A. Ehrensvärd  G. E. Ros	Hugo Meurer  August Schenck zu Schweinsberg  Hjalmar von Bonsdorff  Johan Fabritius
Strength
2,000 Russians 150 Reds	700–800	900 Germans 460 Whites

As Finland gained its independence from Russia in December 1917, a movement was launched in Åland to join the islands to Sweden. The Swedish government had an audience with a delegation from Åland calling action on the question. After the Finnish Civil War started in late January 1918, the Swedish prime minister Johannes Hellner and the king Gustaf V had an audience with a delegation from Åland on 8 February. According to the delegation, a referendum had been held in Åland and a vast majority of 95% was willing to join Sweden. The delegation called for action on the cause and asked help from the Swedish government against the alleged arbitrary and disorder of the Russian troops. The Swedish press also insisted action because of the humanitarian causes. Since the beginning of the war, the government had already evacuated more than 1,000 Swedish citizens from the Finnish mainland via the west coast town of Pori.

The Finnish Civil War expanded to Åland on 10 February, as a squad of 460 White Guard members, led by the captain Johan Fabritius, from the Vakka-Suomi region landed the islands. The group had fled three days earlier from the town of Uusikaupunki and crossed the ice of the Archipelago Sea. After reaching Åland, the Whites had some minor clashes with the Russians. On 14 February, they took the Prästö telegraph station in Sund, capturing 20 Russian soldiers. The Russians, however, had not much interest in resistance, they were mostly waiting for returning home.
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On 13 February, Swedish government finally decided to send troops to Åland. Two days later, a naval detachment of the icebreaker Isbrytaren I, the coastal defense ship HSwMS Thor and the troopship SS Runeberg docked Eckerö in the Swedish side of the islands. A small military unit landed Åland in order to protect the people from alleged misconduct of the Russian troops as well as from the violent threat of the Finnish sides of the Civil War. The Whites incorrectly assumed the Swedes had come to join them. Encouraged by this, the Whites took the artillery batteries in Boxö and Saggö, but instead of supporting them, the Swedes started negotiations with the Russians.

The negotiation was stopped on 17 February, as 150-men Red Guard unit from Turku arrived Åland with the icebreaker Murtaja. Their intention was to help the Russians in the presumed fight against the Swedes and the Whites. In the same day, the Whites took the village of Godby in Finström but the Russian troops were able to keep the village of Jomala and the artillery fort of Sålis. Two days later, the Reds made a counterattack against Godby, but were pushed back. The Battle of Godby ended with 2 killed Whites and 3 killed Reds, 8 captured Reds was later executed. It remained the only Finnish Civil War battle fought in Åland.

                     
German troops landing by the Eckerö Mail and Customs House 

As the situation in Åland had now escalated to open violence, the Swedes intervened the situation with a counterfeit order by the White Army commander C. G. E. Mannerheim calling the Whites to retreat from Åland. In reality, general Mannerheim wanted the Whites to take control of all the islands and then launch an offensive against Turku, the Red capital of Southwest Finland. As the Whites did not know Mannerheim's real intentions, they followed the false order and left Åland on 20 February. As the White Finland found out about the Swedish conduct, they gave a strict objection. The Swedish government now had to convince that their purpose was not to join the islands to Sweden, but only to protect the Swedish-speaking people of Åland.

                      
Captured Russians are escorted to Eckerö.

                      
                                         Swedish brigade

On 19 February, HSwMS Sverige and HSwMS Oscar II carrying a company from the Vaxholm Coastal Artillery Regiment arrived Åland to press the Russians in leaving the islands. The Central Committee of the Baltic Fleet still tried to avoid the armed conflict and on 22 February the political representative Vatslav Vorovsky stated the Russian troops were willing to leave Åland. The order of disarmament was given a day after and the Finnish icebreaker Murtaja took 300 Russians and the Finnish Red Guard fighters to Turku. On 24 February, the 500-man battalion of the Royal Göta Livgarde, commanded by the lieutenant colonel G. E. Ros, landed Eckerö and by the 2 March, the Swedes controlled all the islands, although there were still up to 1,200 disarmed Russian soldiers present.
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The armstice between Russia and Germany lapsed on 18 February 1918 and the Operation Faustschlag was soon launched by the Germans. This included the invasion of Åland, as the Germans did not know whether Sweden would remain neutral or join the Allies. The Germans had their interests in Finland because of the access to the Arctic Sea and the country's presence near the Murmansk railway and the Bolshevik capital of Saint Petersburg. To justify the invasion, Germany ordered a request of military assistance from their allies in Finland. The White Senate message requesting the German invasion of Åland reached Berlin on 22 February. The German intention was to gather troops to Åland and then land the Finnish mainland in the west coast town of Rauma. As the ice in the Bothnian Bay was too thick, the landing was finally made in Hanko, Southern Finland, by the Baltic Sea Division in the first days of April.

                                                 White arm stripes

                                                    executed red

On 28 February, a naval unit of the battleships SMS Westfalen and SMS Rheinland, commanded by the admiral Hugo Meurer, left Danzig to Åland. The ships were carrying the Großherzoglich Mecklenburgisches Jäger-Bataillon Nr. 14, under the command of the major August Schenck zu Schweinsberg. The convoy was slowed down by the heavy ice, but finally the Aalands-Detachement reached Eckerö on 5 March. The following day, the Swedes were forced to make a deal with the Germans. According to the agreement, Sweden and Germany now shared the Åland Islands. The Swedes had a hold on the capital Mariehamn and the villages of Jomala, Geta and Finström. Both were allowed to use the port in Eckerö. A post of the Finnish military governor was established and filled by the naval officer Hjalmar von Bonsdorff as the representant of the White Senate.

The Germans captured up to 1,000–1,200 Russian soldiers which were shipped to Liepāja. 250 Ukrainian, Polish, Latvian and Estonian soldiers of the Russian army were placed to an internment camp in Sweden. These soldiers were later handed over to Germans and transported to Sassnitz in Northern Germany. In Mariehamn, the Germans took several Russian warships and the Finnish steamer SS Baltic.

In 10 March, the Finnish Reds proposed negotiations with the Germans over their potential threat against Turku, the Red capital of Southeast Finland. The Germans agreed to meet the Red delegation in Åland if they would bring the POWs kept in Turku. In 1918 the Russians exchanged more than 65,000 wounded and invalid German POWs via Finland. The Red delegation including the socialist philosopher Georg Boldt and the Turku militia leader William Lundberg, together with 260 POWs, travelled across the ice by horse-drawn sleigh. In 15 March, Boldt and Lundberg had a meeting with the Germans. However, the Reds were told that since the Germans were invited by the Whites, they could not discuss their intentions. Boldt and Lundberg were then escorted back to the mainland.

In late March, the Germans launched a campaign in the Turku archipelago to secure the left wing of the forthcoming Baltic Sea Division landing in Hanko. The plan was to reach Turku from Åland via the islands of Houtskär, Korpo, Nagu and Pargas. Houtskär was taken by the Finnish Whites in 25 March and Korpo in 28 March, but the Reds stopped the German troops in the Battle of Nagu in 4 April. The Germans then left the archipelago and focused on the march from Hanko to Helsinki.

Sweden pulled most of their troops from Åland on 14 March, but the ship Oscar II and one small military unit stayed until the end of the Finnish Civil War. The last Swedes retreated on 26 May 1918. The Germans stayed in the Åland Islands until September 1918. After the war, Sweden was still willing to take the Åland Islands and wanted to solve the dispute in the Treaty of Versailles, but the question was not included. A new referendum was held in 1919 and now 9,900 of the 10,000 voters wanted to join Sweden. A year later, Great Britain took the case to the newly founded League of Nations. In June 1921, Åland was declared as a demilitarised and autonomous territory of Finland.

During their seven-month military campaign in Åland, the Germans lost six men. Three of them were killed on 9 March as the icebreaker Hindenburg struck a mine off Eckerö and sunk. Two sailors drowned on 11 April when the SMS Rheinland grounded between the islands of Lågskär and Flötjan.  In addition to the casualties in Åland, seven Germans were killed in the Battle of Nagu in the Turku Archipelago.

Swedish casualties were one man as an infantry sergeant committed a suicide in April. The Whites had three killed in the Battle of Godby, two in the Battle of Korpo and one in the Battle of Nagu.

The number of killed Russians is not clear but at least two soldiers died in the clashes against the Finnish Whites. One Russian and one Finnish Red was shot by the Whites in late March as they were captured near the island of Vårdö. The order was given by the Finnish military governor Hjalmar von Bonsdorff and the execution was carried out by the Whites occupying the Turku Archipelago. In addition to the 3 Reds killed in the Battle of Godby, 8 captured Reds were shot by the Whites in the ice of Färjsundet Strait. At least 26 also died in the Battle of Nagu and 7 in the Battle of Korpo.
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Battle of Kämärä / Fcw 100 years

The Battle of Kämärä was a 1918 Finnish Civil War battle fought at the Kämärä (now Gavrilovo, Leningrad oblast, Russia) railway station on 27 January 1918 between the Whites and the Reds. 

The battle began as a White Guard battalion from Vyborg attacked Kämärä on its march to the White controlled side of the Karelian Isthmus. After taking the village, the Whites ambushed a Red train carrying a large cargo of weapons from Saint Petersburg, but were finally forced to leave the scene as they ran out of ammunition.

The Battle of Kämärä is considered to be the first battle of the Civil War, although some minor incidents had occurred throughout January.

Kämärän taistelu (Suomeksi)

Battle of Kämärä
Part of the Finnish Civil War
Kämärä railway station in the 1920s
Date 27 January 1918 Location Kämärä, Kuolemajärvi, Finland Result White withdrawal
Belligerents
Finnish Whites	Finnish Reds
Commanders and leaders
Adolf Aminoff	Unknown
Strength
c. 500	500–600
Casualties and losses
18 killed	c. 30 killed

As the violence between the Whites and the Reds escalated in early 1918, one the first fatal clashes occurred in Vyborg, at the time the second largest town in Finland, on 19 January. The Red Guard carried out an inspection at the local shoe factory where the White Guard had stored guns. The incident ended up with three casualties. Four days later, the Vyborg White Guard tried to take over the entire town, but managed to occupy just a few administrative buildings. On the next day, the Red Guard forced the Whites to flee the town. A unit of 500 men, led by the Jäger officer Woldemar Hägglund, marched across the ice of Vyborg Bay to the small island of Venäjänsaari and settled there for a couple of days.

The battalion had some reinforcements from Vyborg, including a doctor, nurses and kitchen staff. Hägglund was named as the commander of the Karelia military district and was replaced by the 62-year-old colonel Adolf Aminoff. Finally, on Friday 26 January, the group left the island. Their plan was to cross the Saint Petersburg-Vyborg railroad in the village of Säiniö (now Cherkasovo, Leningrad oblast), then head north to Antrea, an important railroad junction 30 kilometres north of Vyborg, and join the local Whites. 

A family collecting pine bark to ground into flour for bread during the food shortage caused by the Finnish Civil war, Finland, 1918



The Aminoff squad reached Säiniö in the afternoon, only to find out that the railway station was occupied by the Reds. After a short gunfight, the Whites took the station, but soon a trainload of discharged Russian sailors steamed into Säiniö on its way to Saint Petersburg. As the train stopped, the Russians forced the Whites to retreat and one White fighter was killed. Later that same evening, the Civil War is officially considered to have begun, as the Reds proclaimed the revolution in Helsinki.    

On 27 January, the Whites made a new effort to cross the railway, this time in the village of Kämärä which was located 28 kilometres east of Vyborg. The village was occupied by a small group of Red Guard members from the Vyborg working-class district of Kelkkala. At 2 pm, a fierce gunfight broke out at the railway station and the local Workers' Hall. The Reds were soon outnumbered, and some managed to board a train that came from the direction of Vyborg and stayed at the station for a while. The rest of the Reds fled Kämärä by foot or surrendered.

Red Guards formed the army of Red Finland during the Finnish Civil War in 1918. 

After the battle, the Whites found a telegram concerning the incoming Saint Petersburg train. It was carrying a cargo of 15,000 rifles, 30 machine guns, 10 artillery pieces and 2 million cartridges which the Red Guard commander-in-chief, Ali Aaltonen, had purchased from the Bolsheviks two weeks previously. The so-called ″Great Gun Train″ was escorted by another train with 400 men of the Saint Petersburg Finnish Red Guard, under the command of the Finnish revolutionary Jukka Rahja and Juho Latukka, the head of the Vyborg Red Guard. 

The White Guard had the support of the German's politically and militarily whilst,

 the Red Guard and the SDP had the support of Lenin and the Bolsheviks.

The Whites decided to cut the railway line with explosives, but were unable to dig them into the frozen ground. Colonel Aminoff then felt he had no chance of capturing the train and sent most of his men to continue the march towards Antrea. A squad of only 60 men was left in Kämärä. Their task was to ambush the train and cause as much damage as possible. Jukka Rahja met some Reds who had fled from Kämärä at the Leypyasuo railway station and was informed of the situation. Despite this, he still decided to stop the train in Kämärä for some reason.

The train slowly approached the station where the Whites had managed to break some tracks. The locomotive was derailed, but the rest of the train was left undamaged. Some Reds dismounted from the train and the Whites opened fire on them. The Reds soon had their machine guns in position and returned fire. As the Whites ran out of ammunition, they left the scene by skiing. The Reds fired at the retreating enemy with artillery, but, without any observing, the gunnery was inaccurate. 

The broken tracks were fixed immediately and the Red train was able to leave, delivering its cargo to the Red Guards. The commander, Jukka Rahja, was severely wounded in this engagement and stayed in hospital until the end of the war in May. The Whites reached their destination on 28 January and soon joined the Battle of Antrea which began less than two weeks later.
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The Whites who participated in the Battle of Kämärä ordered a memorial from the prominent Finnish sculptor Wäinö Aaltonen in 1939. 

It was never erected at the Kämärä railway station as the village became a part of the Soviet Union after World War II. 

The statue was finally erected in Helsinki by the National Museum in 1949. In 1974, the memorial was moved to the garrison of the Army Academy in the town of Lappeenranta.