Gustaf Mannerheim

General L. Manberg, the chief of the Finnish Civil Guard, General H.W. Osterman, chief of the Finnish General Staff, General Arne Schievo, chief of the Finnish Heimwehr, and General Lundqvist, chief of the Russian Air Force.

Mannheim's not there, but Mannheim was obviously the overall military commander there at the time.

So Lundqvist is chief of the Finnish Air Force, not the Soviet Air Force.

Yes,

So basically, the Germans had promised loads of anti-tank weapons and air support for Riti, who was the president, to pledge that they would not make a separate peace.

This was all ratified.

But the people who really were in control, like Mannheim and that, they were looking at each other and went, no, hang on a second.

No, no, no, no, no.

That's the first iteration of the idea, is Nazi attempts to justify or ...

And, and even just after the Second World War, in anticipation of, say, the Nuremberg trials, you have some surviving Nazi leaders who basically say, "Well, look," they're talking to the Western allies saying, "Hey, you also don't like the Soviets.

They were about to attack us.

We had to do it." Alfred Jodl is an example of saying that, and so on and so forth.

Um, I don't wanna...

We're name-dropping like mad in this episode, which we don't normally do, but this particular topic is, it's very interesting to see who does what and when, as we've been saying, in what context.

But the '90s also bring a, an influential book, not only one, but one in particular that I'm thinking about called The Great Deception by Gorodetsky, who basically says, "Look, okay, I also have access to these new documents, and this thesis of a preventive war is even more off balance," right? So he puts out a basically a detailed study of the Soviet leadership and their reactions and their intelligence services and how they were completely misunderstanding and misinterpreting Germany, not prepared, took the bait for all sorts of German deceptive measures, Stalin who deceived himself.

So all of that going towards...

But the legal government didn't give up without a fight.

Instead, it regrouped in Fasa, where General Gustav Mannerheim had gone just a few days before.

Even though the Red side held the most populous and developed part of the country and had the backing of Bolshevik Russia, the Whites eventually managed to establish control over the northern parts of the country and from there push the Reds back, to no small degree thanks to help from Germany and Swedish volunteers.

The tide of the war shifted decisively already in early April with the fall of Tampere, and the White side could proclaim victory on May 15th.

In their view, the Reds had started the war with their revolution.

They were traitors who had to be rooted out, even if that meant death.

Mannerheim himself helped to create the framework for this in a directive issued on February 25th concerning the treatment of red prisoners.

By then, the number of captured reds was growing rapidly, and the whites needed some kind of unified policy.

Finland's anti-Russian foreign policy aligns with its history.

In 1940, Finland's virulently anti-communist leader Mannerheim invited Germany to occupy the country, and Finland fought the Red Army alongside the Nazis from 1941 to 1944.

As in Ukraine, Finland's pro-fascist past is celebrated by current politicians and used to feed contemporary Russophobia.

Finland is now raising arms spending towards 5% of GDP and cutting social services to do so.

Schreiber doesn't know about him.

Uh, it's a Finnish historian who died a couple of years ago, Houtamieki, and who had the private archive of, uh, Finnish leader Mannheim in his, um, in his care.

And he said that Germany, was about to be attacked, that the plans were to attack Germany from two sides.

Russia would attack, the Soviet Union would attack, and England, Britain, and France would also attack at the same time.