Vanguard of the Republic - Finnish Army 1918-1939
Members of Civil Guards (Suojeluskunta) in a field exercise with live ammunition on summer 1938.
"As a greeting for your beloved homes
let this song of ours now echo, through the
fields, over waters and northern fells from
Hanko to Petsamo!
The rhythm of our march is like before,
and as we march by instict we know,
how proudly our fathers gaze upon
their sons from the depths of their
burial mounds!
O brother of mine, you know so well
what brought our journey here. With
joy in our hearts we all rallied forth
as the call for us all rang near!
It was custom of forefathers, now carried
forth by young soldiers: as danger threatens
our dear homeland, we leave our toils and
make a stand!
Whatever treasures may Finland hold,
truly freedom is valued most. Our right
to unyieldingly stand or fall is not just
an empty boast!
So ye infants and elders old, and our
brides and our mothers, behold:
to the last man our forces shall stand
and fight, we shall guard your peace
with our lives!"
A popular march song from the war era, lyrics written by F.E. Sillanpää just few months before the Winter War begun
Army, Militia and Weapons Design
When the White side of the Finnish Civil War begun to mobilize and reorganize the dispersed Civil Guards movement into a new national army in 1918, this new force drew much inspiration from the previous Finnish national army that was paradoxically much older than Finnish independence. The last unit of the Army of the Grand Duchy of Finland had been decommissioned in 1905, and many former officers trained in the originally Swedish military academy of Hamina Cadet School started a new career as the first commanders of the new Finnish Army. These men were still firmly in charge in the General Staff when the outlines of Finnish Army were being drawn. After the war the Civil Guards were officially turned back into independent paramilitary organization in February 1919. While the leadership of Civil Guards movement wanted to regain their freedom to operate and develop their organization as they saw fit, the newly formed Army was seeking a way to become a truly national army for the war-torn nation - a force based on the other side of the Civil War would have surely been unable to win over any respect from the supporters of the Reds. Army leaders aimed to turn the military into a guardian of new national consensus, and carefully sought to keep it away from daily politics while turning the conscription system into a way of indoctrinating new age classes of conscripts into reliable citizen-soldiers of the young republic. In September 1919, in the middle of the turbulent years of the Kinship Wars, the legal framework for the Army was finally ready. Highest authority was reserved to the President of the Republic, and Chief of Staff and Chief of the Army were both under his command, controlled by the new War Ministerium. In 1922 (after the threat of getting involved to the Russian Civil War was removed and Treaty of Tartu was signed) the legal framework was expanded further when a new Conscription Act made military service compulsory for every able-bodied adult male, starting from the age of 18 and releasing the reservists from the last reserve category in the age of 65.
The new conscription was based on a cadre system. A small professional core group of officers and standing army would train reservists, who would remain in training that would generally last a year, with three months of additional extra service in the Air Force, cavalry and technical supply units. The new system drew inspiration from pre-war Russian methods due the influence of the current Russian-trained General Staff, but some parts of the system were also copied from Germany due the insistence of influential Jaeger officers. This reform was the first time when the two internal conflicts that would determine the status and development of the Army during the 1920s emerged: The disagreements over methods between German-trained Jaegers and Russian-trained Old Guard on the one hand, and between the Army and Civil Guards on the other. In 1934 the system was once again reformed after the political turmoil in domestic politics made the politicians more eager to link Civil Guards to more reliable Army. The recruitment system was now linked to already existing District system of the Civil Guards organization, and after this reform units raised from certain recruiting districts would be formed almost exclusively from local personel. Thus it ensured that men would go to war alongside their neighbours. By keeping men in the same reservist squads, platoons and companies for long periods of time and returning NCOs and recently promoted junior officers to the units in which they had previously served the Army managed to use existing social links to create strong unit cohesion, and the final result was a functional reserve army with motivated soldiers who knew their fellow soldiers and officers.
The new Finnish Army was founded upon old military traditions, drawing influence from Sweden, Russia and Germany. This mixing of different traditions and approaches caused internal friction within the new Army, but also ensured an atmosphere where innovative new ideas could be freely discussed, as opposing camps of the Finnish military establishment were pitted against one another again and again during the defense policy debates of the postwar decades in 1920s and 1930s.
The story of the new service rifle of the Finnish Army is a good example of the internal situation of the country, the relations between Civil Guards and the Army and the way new innovations were ultimately taken to use. After the Civil War Finland was filled with captured Russian Mosin-Nagant M1891 rifles, while significant numbers of other rifle types were also present. While there therefore was no lack of weapons per se, the old "three line rifle" was deemed as an unsatisfactory service rifle for future by both the Army and the Civil Guards. Meanwhile limited budgets and the antimilitaristic attitude of SDP ensured that the Army would not be able to purchase totally new rifle for the whole army in the near future. Therefore a new committee was set up and tasked to develop a new Finnish service rifle based on the existing design. The aim of the project was not to develop totally new weapon, but to develop a cost-efficient upgrade program that could be used to update the existing stock of rifles bu utilizing as many existing parts of the Mosin-Nagant M1891 as possible.
While the old Mosin-Nagant remained in production in the Soviet Union, Finns took this battle-proven weapon as a basis and then reverse-engineered it to produce a new family of more accurate and reliable service rifles.
But while the Army bureaucracy lagged on due lack of funds through the early 1920s, the Civil Guards had initiated a paraller similar project of their own few years later. In the end the design teams of the Civil Guard and the Army submitted two different rifles for testing and evaluation. Army Committee was initially critical to the design of the militia, but ultimately it was determined that the Civil Guard designed weapon showed more merit and upon some small revisions (and much more bureaucratic delays) the Army finally accepted the weapon as well on 1927. At the same time these contract talks had been going on, the Civil Guard had already established a new weapons workshop in the metal industry area of Riihimäki to assemble and produce their new rifle that could then be sold privately, no matter what the outcome of the project would be. This new company was called
Suojeluskuntien Ase-Ja Konepaja Osakeyhtiö. With new barrels produced by
Schweizerische Industrie-Gessellschaft, old and venerable SIG and the new SAKO combined their expertice to produce the Finnish M28/30 rifle that was in production between 1928-1933 with a total production of roughly 30 000 weapons. The Army version of the rifle (virtually the same weapon with some cosmetic changes and the designation of Infantry Rifle M/27) was produced by Tikkakoski and Valtion Kivääritehdas (State Rifle Factory) with a total production 60 000 rifles.
With the problem of the service rifle thus solved at least for part of the standing army, the early 1930s paid more attention to the general state of the infantry weapons Army used, especially to Maxim MGs, the weapons system that still formed the core of the direct firepower of Finnish infantry units. Finnish usage of machineguns was directly copied from German methods and then adapted to local circumstances and terrain features. Fire from automatic infantry weapons was mainly provided by MGs supported by squad-level LMGs . To maximize the effectiveness of these weapons Finnish prewar training manuals stated that they should; 1) have clear fields of fire, 2) be located in protective positions, 3) be positioned to give flanking fire (the goal being to catch the enemy in the crossfire of multiple MG’s) and 4) be able to cover any defensive obstacles (tank & infantry obstacles) with their fire. Importance of flanking fire was further emphasized by stating that "
Flanking effect can be achieved by either fire, movement or a combination of both. A weaker force can hope to achieve success against numerically superiour opponent by attacking to the flanks. Flanking fire multiplies the effectiveness of fire, and when used together with tactical surprise and fire from other directions it has a paralyzing effect to the enemy, who is therefore forced to direct his attention and actions to multiple directions.*"
*Infantry Manual II, 1932.
Maxim M/32-33, a Finnish modification of the old Great War MG from 1932. It had a faster rate of fire (up to 850 RPM vs roughly 600 of the original model), German-styled metallic ammunition belt and most importantly an improved cooling system with a snow hatch on the top of the barrel cooler. This little feature enabled the crews of the weapon to keep it operational and firing in winter conditions for extremely long periods of time if necessary.
While the Maxims were gathered to special Machine Gun Companies in each Infantry Battalion, the weapon was still considered to be too heavy for successful mobile warfare in difficult forested terrain, where the limited visibility dictated that weapons had be located far forward, capable of delivering massive firepower while simultaneously remaining light enough to be quickly displaced when necessary. By 1930s the analysis of earlier fighting in the Kinship Wars, Civil War and the latest field exercises all clearly showed a new demand for a lighter and more mobile automatic weapon. Initially the solution for this problem seemed to be a new version of the standard squad-level LMG, the Lahti-Saloranta M/26 with a latter LS-26-31 modification that could accommodate new drum magazine with 75 rounds. But due the limited defense budgets of 1930s the Army was unwilling to field two versions of the same LMG, especially since the process of aquiring enough M/26s for the whole field army was still underway. Thus the LS-26-31 remained a curiousity, Army was stuck with an automatic weapon with 188 parts and 20-rounds box magazine, and the most important weapons designer of the young republic begun to seek alternative solutions.
Aimo Johannes Lahti was a self-learned gunsmith and the leading weapons designer in Finland between the wars. He and his design team either improved existing obsolete Tsarist-era weapon systems or developed new ones, so that during WWII Finnish Army used his designs as it´s official pistol, service rifle, MG, LMG, SMG, antitank rifle and also used several other less common weapons his group had designed.
The development process of the new light automatic weapon Lahti had in mind was a long process. At the time Bergmann MP18 represented the most advanced weapon of this type, and Lahti studied Swiss-made SIG Bergmanns that were bought for the Army for trials. Lahti was impressed by the consept of a submachine gun, but begun to pursue a different structural approach in his own project that aimed to create a Finnish submachine gun more adapted to the local conditions and demands of the Army. For years Lahti produced prototypes after another, using his own money and later on joining forces with three low-ranking officers in the new company called Konepistooli Oy. Finally, in early 1931, the final prototype of the new SMG was ready and Lahti offered it to the Defense Ministerium (as the old War Ministerium was renamed in late 1920s.) When the bureaucracy was once again slow to make official decisions, Lahti sold the blueprints to Finnish weapons production company, Tikkakoski, that was already producing M/27 rifles for the Army. As foreign investors begun to take interest to Lahti and his work, Defense Ministerium finally realized his worth to the state,and employed him in 1932 to develop and improve the weapons of the Army while also granting the state the right to market and sell them abroad. While Finnish weapon exports never really took of, weapons designed by Lahti were used in small local conflicts in South America and more importantly in the Republic of China (that never received the agreed 30 000 M/26 LMGs due the diplomatic pressure of the Japanese embassy in Helsinki.)
Accurate SMG with 75-round drum magazine, the M/32 Suomi SMG was one of the best infantry weapons of its class by the time it was introduced. It was also hopelessly expensive to manufacture, but it´s features (especially the magazine) were nevertheless later on copied to the mass-produced Soviet SMG models.
Fire and movement - tactics and strategy of the interwar Finnish Army
Studies for infantry tactics were a key part of the development of Finnish military during the two decades between Civil War and 1918. The planners of the first training manuals were men who had been trained by the German system emphasizing competent and initiative NCO leadership, while their war experience was an unique mixture of the trench warfare in Eastern Front followed by the experiences of Finnish Civil War and Kinship Wars in Estonia, Ingria and Eastern Karelia. The fast-paced and relatively mobile (in WWI standards) small unit combat stressed the importance of rifle marksmanship, camouflage and most importantly the use of terrain. Ambushes, hit-and-run raids and constant maneuvers that had defined these conflicts were now taken to use in Army training schemes. As noted before, the emphasis for flanking manouvres and seizing the initiative were deemed important. And as paradoxical it may sound, the legacy of German-trained Jaeger officers ensured that tactical attack became the most favoured fighting style.
While this may seem suicidal tactic for a nation of 3.7 million bordering a superpower that was known to possess more trained reserves as the total population of Finland combined, it served the political mission of the Army rather well. As the emphasis in Finnish foreign policy was focusing towards neutrality and Scandinavian countries in the new era of "Red Earth"-coalitions of SDP and Agrarian League, the Army was seen more and more as the guarantee for territorial neutrality of Finland in a scenario of a new European war. And since the peacetime army was in fact a mere delaying force with a primary mission to buy time for the mobilization of the field army since the most expected scenario was that the enemy would launch a surprise attack, the ability to tactically harass and delay the advancing foe was deemed important. Furthermore majority of the the almost roadless Eastern Karelian border between Finland And Soviet Union was considered to be terrain where division- or even regimental-sized formations would be unable to operate due the lack of necessary infrastructure to supply them. Therefore the defense of borderzone north from the shores of Lake Laatokka (Ladoga) became the task of 25 lighly armed and equipped Independent Battalions (
Erillinen Pataljoona). Before the war these units were planned to be used by sending them to Soviet territory to conduct guerrilla warfare in Eastern Karelia, thus forcing the Red Army to divert men and material away from the Karelian Isthmus in order to defend the Murmansk Railway.
It was generally agreed that WWI-styled attritional trench warfare was a situation that should be avoided at all costs, since it was precisely the type of combat where the potential opponent excelled and was able to use its material superiourity to full extend. Instead the planners believed that a bold attack at the right time and place could lead to success. Delaying actions were planned to be executed in an active manner, and any passive defense was thought to be only temporary and something that had to be resorted in while preparing for an offense elsewhere. All these tactical schemes were devised with the firm knowledge that the potential foe would certainly have massive artillery and air superiority, and therefore operations in open terrain were deemed impossible. Meanwhile forests were considered the best terrain to conduct attacks, as even a big numerical and technical superiority was considered to be undecisive due the possibility for small-unit manouvres and the fact that a large force was unable to bring its total firepower to bear. The offensive mentality was further supported by peacetime military exercises, which were usually focused only on attack or delay-attack scenarios. While taking offense tactically, the Finnish strategic thinking was firmly based on a defensive mindset. One of the key reasons for this was the influence of French military schools and military theories. Being widely seen as the strongest land army in western Europe during the 1920s, France was a natural place to send talented young officers for training. A large part of officers who had received education in France were in key leading positions in later phases of Finnish history. At this time Army planners became increasingly interested on fixed fortification zones and the possibilities they offered. The first fortification efforts in the Karelian Isthmus were, however, a short-lived project in the mid-1920s and after this time the idea of building prepared defense lines was not priorized - global economical crisis soon ensured that Army was operating with a budget that barely allowed it to maintain training and exercises, and thus nothing could be spared to grand construction efforts. In addition to their ideas of strategic defense and fortifications the French-trained officers also brough home military thinking that was way older than the experiences of the Great War. When a young Finnish Captain named Akseli Airo was studying in
École Supérioure de Guerre, he was fashinated by the thoughts and ideas of one of his course books. He bought a copy for himself, and kept reading it and making markings and sidenotes through the later time when Airo led the operational planning of Finnish Army.
The book Airo and many other prominent Finnish military theorists praised and kept reading over and over again was nothing less than L'art militaire - dans l'antiquité chinoise, an old French translation and commentary of the Chinese classic "Art of War." Later in his life Airo commented to an interview: "The art of war itself has remained unchanged. I have a French book that contains a compilation of Chinese wisdom of military leadership and warfare, and the theses presented there are still valid today...it contains the whole art of war, and it has been written two millenias ago. Naturally equipment and weapons change and will change in the future as well, but the principles are still the same and they will remain so as well."
Supply track on a winter camouflage. The supply system of the Finnish Army was almost exclusively based on horse-drawn supply convoys since mobility in roadless terrain was deemed vitally important - not that the poor country could have afforted even modest motorization of it´s forces. During a time of mobilization of the field army the law forced the agrarian nation to give up most of the civilian horses for the usage of the Army.
Finnish artillery, 1877-vintage. Despite the fact that the pioneering and modern work of Russian-trained artillery specialist General Nenonen had ensured that the training and methods of Finnish artillery were excellent, the abysmal material condition and chronic ammo shortage of Finnish artillery arm would come back to haunt the Army later.
Elite of the Army. Bicycle Battalion (Polkupyöräpataljoona) was an experimental light infantry unit. Two were formed and later on renamed to 1st and 2nd Jaeger Battalion (Jääkäripataljoona.) These units consisted of pre-selected, physically fit conscripts and they were led by the "rising stars" of the Finnish officer corps. The Jaeger units were designed to be the spearhead of counterattacks, act as a delaying unit in the borderzones in a surprise attack situation and generally provide the HQ with a light, mobile and well-trained fighting unit. Later on the men trained in these units would form the future core group of the best division in the Finnish Army.
The story of armored units in Finnish Army would later on form a link to the light Jaeger brigades, but few people knew it before the war. As a part of the initial spirit of experimentation the country bought modern Automitrailleuse à chenilles Renault FT modèle 1917 from the French right after the Great War, and for a moment it seemed that armored forces would have a similar roaring start as the Finnish Air Force. It was not to be. Led by a traditional-minded cavalry officer Mannerheim and generals who believed that "Finnish terrain is generally ill-suited for armored warfare", the Army was often tempted to decomission the small armored force altogether and kept it on a minimal size. Only later on the purchase of a small groups of Vickers 6-tons (without optics and guns to save money) allowed the Finns to field any kind of armored force when the WWII begun.
.
