Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim

Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim (1867-1951), Finnish army officer and statesman. Baron Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim was born in Vilnäs. In his youth he entered the Russian army and served in the Russo-Japanese War and World War I. In 1917, at the outbreak of the Russian Revolution, Mannerheim returned to Finland and organized the White Guards, who were allied with the nationalists against the Bolsheviks in the Finnish civil war of 1918. As a leading figure in Finland's fight for independence, he was regent of the new nation in 1918-19. He was promoted to field marshal in 1933 and planned the fortified line of defense across the 113-km (70-mi) neck of the Karelian Isthmus that was known as the Mannerheim line. He commanded the Finnish army in the Russo-Finnish War of 1939-40 and conducted the German-Finnish attack in 1941 on the USSR. As president of Finland from 1944 to 1946, he ended hostilities between Finland and the USSR. The English translation of his Memoirs was published posthumously in 1954.