Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim

Biography

Gustaf Mannerheim was born in 1867 into a Swedish-speaking noble family at Louhisaari manor in Askainen, in the Grand Duchy of Finland. Expelled from the Hamina cadet school in 1886, he passed his entrance examinations privately and graduated from the Nicholas Cavalry College in Saint Petersburg in 1889. He made his career in the Imperial Russian Army, serving in the Chevalier Guard and taking part in the coronation of Nicholas II in 1896.

He fought in the Russo-Japanese War, crossed Asia on horseback to Beijing in 1906-1908 on an intelligence-gathering expedition for the Russian General Staff, and commanded on the Eastern Front in the First World War, reaching the rank of lieutenant general by 1917. After Finland declared independence he was appointed commander of the White forces in January 1918 and led them to victory in the civil war.

As regent from December 1918 to July 1919 he secured recognition of Finnish independence from several Entente powers and ratified the republican constitution, then lost the 1919 presidential election to K. J. Ståhlberg. He helped found the Mannerheim League for Child Welfare and headed the Finnish Red Cross. In 1931 he became chairman of the Defence Council, and in 1933 field marshal.

When the Soviet Union attacked in November 1939 he became commander-in-chief, leading Finland through the Winter War and the Continuation War, which it fought alongside Germany; he was named Marshal of Finland in 1942. Parliament elected him president in August 1944, and he oversaw the armistice with the Soviet Union and Britain. In failing health he resigned in March 1946, wrote his memoirs at a Swiss sanatorium and died in Lausanne in 1951.