Finnish Civil War History

So this is my first "Historical" video explaining a certain conflict in history, I hope you guys enjoy. If you do what would interest you most next? This is a very basic overview of the Finnish Civil war, if you guys want me to go into greater detail about the Red Guards, or the White Armies and their international volunteers don't hesitate to ask.
1. The creation of the NSDAP "Nazi Party"
2. The Red Purge "Soviet Union"
3. The Angolan Bush War
4. Other (Put it in the comments)

[jvc]

The Mannerheim family was originally from Germany, but they had moved to Finland in 1600s. Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim was part of the swedish speaking nobility in Finland. He had served as an officer in the Imperial Russian Army before the revolution.

[anttihyvonen]

You got several facts wrong, which need to be corrected:

For the Finnish workers' revolution to have been a communist revolution, it would've needed communist leadership, which it lacked as the Finnish Communist Party (later renamed the Communist Party of Finland) was founded only after the war in exile. Even internationally, the separation of the communist movement from social-democracy had barely started with the bolsheviks leading the way. What existed in Finland was the Social-Democratic Party which did have a left-wing that later became the core of the communist party. But prior to the war, the only party-level alignment with the bolsheviks was on the national question of Finland, since 1905. Besides that, bolshevik literature and theory was little known even among the left. Even after the war, not all of it joined, aligned or allied with the communists.

It's true that the Red Guard leadership pushed the party towards insurrection, but they didn't just arrive from somewhere. The Red Guard were an amalgamation of the earlier workers' militias, which were first formed in 1905. They were the most revolutionary organization of the Finnish labour movement, but again, not an extension of the bolsheviks. They had not been trained in Russia. All training they had was the little local exercises they could do in Finland under semi-legal conditions. Only after the war many of the surviving Red Guard personnel had military careers in Soviet-Russia.

Military coup d'etat means the seizure of an established state through its military organs (which only existed in nascent forms in Finland at the time), not an armed insurrection from outside the whole apparatus (as the reds did). It was a revolution with the participation of the bulk of the working class who mainly lived in the Southern Finland, where consequently the revolution was mainly limited to. The Red Guard, which involved over 100 000 members, was maintained by an even bigger "infrastructure" of other mass organizations. More complex was the alignment of the peasantry, as it consisted of different distinct strata and lived in different conditions in different parts of the country. The bulk of the white guard rank-and-file consisted mostly of peasants, especially from Ostrobothnia.

The participation of Russian troops is a complex matter, as was their composition. There had been two revolutions in Russia within a year. Many of the troops stationed in Finland had been there before the first, and didn't turn bolshevik just because bolsheviks took over Petrograd. There was widespread sympathy among the Russian troops towards the Finnish labour movement and the cause of Finnish self-determination, but party alignments varied, as besides the bolsheviks there had been also other Russian parties doing political work among the soldiers. That was one of the reasons, besides the Brest-Litovsk treaty and the threat of Germans starting hostilities again, for the Soviet government to actually hasten the pulling out of troops. A lot of the Russian troops remaining in Finland had given thier guns to the Finnish whites without any attempt of resistance or even happily. The bolsheviks wanted to help the Finnish reds, but for that they needed to send their own men and not rely on the mixed left-overs of the previous regimes of the Czar and Kerensky.

There was a civil war going on also in Russia and the Soviet government had its hands full fighting domestic whites and foreign interventions. It would've been crazy for them to focus on Finland beyond what was needed to secure that front.

You're right that the Soviet Russian troops mattered a lot to the Finnish reds. The reds lacked trained officers and one of their biggest weaknesses if not the biggest was with the organization of logistics. The Red Guard was based on the earlier, mostly locally organized workers' militias not prepared to fight far from home.

The "panzer units" probably refer to two armoured cars. At least one was used in combat.

Lastly, you should also have mentioned the direct involvement of the German 10 000 strong Baltic Sea Division, which invaded the Red Finland from the South and took Helsinki among other locations.

[Staccet]

The Civil War was REALLY ruthless on both sides, no mercy.

[MarauderPol]

Very interesting video! Maybe to stay in the same time and geographical area a brief summary of what was going on in the Baltic States 1918-21?

[danielmaloney]

Angolan Bush War would be cool. Keep up the vids

[Caldera]

Majority of the Finns don't even remember the civil war anymore. The war against Soviet Union later on really soldered any wounds and brought such a sense of unity that it's still present today. The fact that Mannerheim managed to bring the Red Guard and Whites to fight together against Soviets was such a big feat that it's concidered to be the 'miracle of Winter War'.

Of course if you talk to the older generation, they still remember the civil war, but very, very few harbour any hostile feelings anymore towards the other side. Mostly because there's very few left that are even alive anymore.

I'm not saying that the civil war isn't relevant to Finns, I'm saying that the sense of unity from Winter War is a lot stronger.

[warpig]

I very like your historical gameplay. Wouldn't it be great if you do this in live?

[atlcsi]

nice video man ;)

i will go with number (3)

[comradeluxemburg]

A video on the Franco-Prussian war and the Paris Commune would be pretty cool. Or the German revolution in 1919

[herptek]

The red guards were basically left-wing militias while the white guards, so called, were right-wing militias. Neither side had very good or consistent military training as Finnish military had been surpressed during the periods of oppression, when the Russian empire tried to take away the autonomous status of the grand dutchy of Finland.

After declaration of independence these militias filled the power vacuum left by a newly independent country without a formal military.

The best trained, or at least most formally trained troops on the red side were without doubt the Russian garrisons that took the red side. The Russian troops had been agitating for the reds and causing problems for the public order.

Shortly before the red revolt started the Finnish government had declared the white guards to be the official military of the legal government. Mannerheim was chosen as the leader for the armed forces and it was under his orders that the civil guards started disarming the Russian garrisons in Ostrobothnia. The red revolt against the legal government started briefly after these events had been set into motion.

The level of military training on the white side was also varied. Without doubt the best trained Finnish soldiers on the white side were by and large the finnish jaegers who returned from Germany shortly after the hostilities started. The jaegers would have wanted to fight together as a separate unit of their own, but Mannerheim insisted that they would be of better use when dispersed among the civil guards as NCOs so that their military experience would be more widely distributed among the troops. At a later phase Germany itself also intervened on the white side, providing more soldiers on the white side with a high level of formal training. This was at the later phase after the war was basically won already and red defeat seemed inevitable already.

[tyttiMK]

WWII started (in Europe) in September 1939, the Winter War started in November 1939, so no, it wasn't fought before WWII. In fact the invasion of Poland and the Winter War even had the same origin, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

Also it wasn't "von" Mannerheim, his name was just Mannerheim and he wasn't German but a Finnish general who had served almost 30 years in the Russian Imperial Army.

[Latsilae]

Mannerheim was a Fenno-Swede, that is to say a person whos family has lived in Finland for generations but has kept their native tongue of Swedish. They make up some 5% of the Finnish population. Mannerheims ancestry came to Sweden from Germany sometime in the 1600s, then they emigrated to Finland.

[MrZambooni]

Mannerheim was a fin but he spoke Swedish! He came back to Finland from the Red Army before the revolution in Russia.

[maverickpaladin]

Very interesting content. Unfortunately your soundtrack has a number of skips. Is it the soundtrack or my connection?

[samt]

One of the Muscovite-Lithuanian wars please.

[ralfhaggstrom]

Mr Lenin (Vladimir Uljanov) really gave the reds a ton of arms and ammo. Ralf

[damooseman]

I think its importance in Finnish history is largely overshadowed by the Winter War, but is largely depends on where you are in Finland. I am of the swedish speaking minority who live along the coast (Vasa specifically in my case) and we even have a statue in the city centre honoring the jaegers, since they landed here in Vasa before pushing the Red Guards back to Tampere (Tammerfors).
As for Mannerheim, while I don't like everything he did, he is one of ours. He was also of the finlandssvensk though he served in the Russian army for many years because Finland was at the time part of Russia.
As for Finnish hatred of Swedes, I honestly don't understand it so much myself. I mean language aside I have no connection with Sweden really and am quite proud of my country and culture (ja, Finland not Sweden) but although I have no desire to see the Swedes come back and rule us again... And at least for finlandssvensk, we find Swedes can be a bit arrogant and condescending towards us and our "dialect" of Swedish. I mean the Russians were far more brutal, yet seems some Finns spend more energy hating Swedes and thinking the Russians aren't so bad.
But anyway it's not like all Finns feel that way.

[presidentforlife]

Communism? You have a strange way of spelling "cancer".

[ojoronen]

It's been over a year now and you are still saying Mannerheim is a German general. Correct it please and all the other mistakes too.

[DjTinzah]

Most of this is an opinion piece. There are absolutely no sources.