What are they good for? Part 5 Russian Civil War

The Estonian War of Independence was a small part of the much larger Russian Civil War. When the Russian Empire collapsed into civil war the Estonians and many others made a bid for independence in 1918. First they were invaded by the Germans, but when they surrendered to the allies they evacuated Estonia. Shortly afterward it was instead the Red that invading the country. They quickly took Narva and advanced quickly toward Tallinn. At Christmas Eve they are just 34 km from the capitol.

At this point the first of two Finns regiment arrived in Estonia to help their neighbors. Many, if not all, of the Finns were veterans from the Finnish Civil War. Estonians and Finns are closely related and their language is very similar. With help from armoured trains the Estonians counter-attack and push back the Reds to Narva.

A force of 1000 Estonian marines and  Finnish volunteers made a surprise attack on Narva and pushed out the Reds. At the end of January Estonia was liberated and instead they attacked into Russia and Latvia. But the Germans hadn't disappeared from the Baltics; there was a large army in Latvia fighting the Reds. Now they invaded again Estonia to create a Baltic state under German influence. To make a long story short a year later the Estonians had defeated both the Russians and the Germans and now they were independent!

The Estonian army had during spring 1919 volunteers from Finland, Sweden and Denmark. There were as many as 300 Swedes in the Estonian army. Most were in Finnish or Estonian units, but they did also have a unit of their own, Svenska Kåren i Estland (The Swedish Corps in Estonia). There were around 100 men in it. Many had fought in the Finnish Civil War, but instead of being an elite unit it was a disaster.

While the soldiers and officers were in Narva, the staff was in Tallinn, drinking. It looks like they used all the corps money for booze. A few months later the unit had a new commander and it took part in battles in southern Estonia or northern Latvia. Very soon half of the men were wounded. Instead of recruiting more Swedes to replace the losses the unit was disbanded. It is possible that low moral made it unusable for battle. It is even possible that there was a mutiny just before the end.

After the disbandment a few joined Finnish, Danish or Estonian units, while others formed "Svenska Vita Legionen" (The Swedish White Legion) and fought for the Russian North-western army.

But did they use Swedish uniforms? In the Osprey book Man-at-arms 305 there is a picture with Swedish volunteers. They don't have Swedish uniforms, but they have helmets that look like the early Swedish. The caption says that it is from 1918 and the helmets are Swedish. The problem is that all my sources say that the helmet was being used from 1921 by the Swedish army, so the text must be incorrect, either it is later or it is some other helmets.



Swedish soldiers at Narva

What are they good for? Part 3 Fighting SA and SS

This is the third article about what you can do with your WW1 and Interwar Swedes. In part 1 we talked about fighting Russians, Germans and Finns 1918, part 2 was about VBCW and getting an excuse for fighting the English and now in part 3 we are going to fight the SA and SS in Germany 1935! If that doesn't sound fun then you don't know what fun is!

3 Peace keeping in Saar 1935 - Facing Evil!

Background: After World War One France took over Saar (in south-western Germany) and all their coal mines. In January 1935 the people in Saar voted if they wanted to belong to Germany, France or continue being ruled by the League of Nations (LN). Many anti-nazists had fled to Saar, because it was the only part of Germany not rule by Hitler, and they were for continued rule by LN. Hitler on the other hand saw it as a great propaganda opportunity and wanted the people to vote for merging with Germany. The situation before the voting was therefore tense. LN sent peace-keeping soldiers from United Kingdoms, Italy, Nederland and Sweden to help the local police.
At this point Sweden had no troops that were any good, so instead of sending a battalion they were forced to make a new battalion by recruited a lot of NCO, cadets and officers from all the other regiments. The battalion, known as the Saar- or sometimes Zarbattalion, had only 261 men organized in two companies and a battalion staff. 50 of the men were officers.
The battalion arrived in Saar the 22 of December and because of their inexperience they were placed in Merzig and Becking in northern Saar, which was considered to be quite. It was a correct assumption, the Swedish troops didn't need to deal with any unrest; instead they enjoyed their stay by playing a lot of table tennis with the locals. On the day of the voting some of the Swedes were out on patrol, while the others were ready if anything would happen. Nothing happened. They went home on 18 of February.

What-if: There is at least one possible scenario

There were irregular SA and SS troops in Saar, making trouble. What if they wanted to test the inexperienced Swedes? Then there could have been some skirmishing in the towns and hamlets between the soldiers from the NL-force and SA/SS militia. And what about the German police forces, would they just look on or take part in the skirmishing? Would anti-nazist take part in the fighting?
Then there could have been three-way fighting between LN (Sweden, UK, Italy or Nederland), anti-nazist militia and SA/SS militia.

Forces: 1500 from UK, 1300 Italians, 250 Dutch, 261 Swedes and unknown number from SA/SS.

 

Herman Berglund in front of the building where the Swedish soldiers were stationed

 

What are they then good for? Part 1: The Åland crisis

What are these Swedes good for? What conflicts did they fight?

Well, almost none actually.

So what good are they then?

You can game a lot of different what-if scenarios! Here are the first of many ideas:

1 The Åland Crisis 1918 - part of the Finnish Civil War and part of World War One.

Background: Åland is a archipelago in the middle of the Baltic Sea between Sweden and Finland. The population is Swedish speaking, but belongs to Finland since the war in 1808-09. During the Finnish civil war the islands had a Russian garrison of 2000 men. White Guards (Sydvästra Finlands Skyddskår/Nystadskåren) from Turku/Åbo decided to go over the frozen Baltic Sea to confront the Russians. Soon after they arrived, Red Guards, also from Turku/Åbo, arrived too. The two groups started shooting at each other. At this point the Swedish government sent a few warships to help mediate between the Finnish forces and protect the civilians. They all agreed on a peace agreement. A little later the Swedes sent over a battalion (from Göta Livgarde) to help the Finnish and Russian troops to evacuate the islands. At this point the Germans arrived with a reinforced battalion! They were here to help the Finnish government (white) in the civil war. Everyone went home (except for the Germans who went first to Finland and then to the west front). Crisis over.

What-if: There are at least two different scenarios

1 What had happened if the Finnish forces had continued to fight each other? Then there could have been fighting between an alliance of Sweden, White Finland and Germany against Red Finland and Russia.

2 There was at this point a strong opinion in Sweden in favour of making Åland a part of Sweden. The population on Åland was not considered, by Sweden, to be Swedish speaking Finns (like those on mainland Finland) but "real" Swedes. Finland, including Swedish speaking Finns, saw the islands as a part of Finland, and was very suspicious about the Swedish forces on Åland and why they were there. They suspected that they were there to “take back” the islands. So the second scenario is a Swedish invasion of Åland against White Finland supported by Germany and Red Finland supported by Russia. We could here have a nice threesome!

Forces: 1000 Germans, 2000 Russians, 200 Red Guards, 600 White Guards (Nystadskåren), a few hundreds civilians from Åland and 600 Swedes. Both the White and Red Guards were from Turku/Åbo, which by the way has many Swedish speaking Finns.

Nystadskåren was badly equipped; they had only 115 rifles and a machine gun when they left Nystad for Åland. The whole reason why they went to Åland was to try to take guns from the Russians.

The 200 Red Guards were only a vanguard; 400 more arrived after the peace agreement.

The Russian garrison had plenty of good and modern weapons, but their motivation is low, the war is over they just want to go home.

The German battalion is the Prussian Jägerbattalion no 14.

The Swedish forces are three infantry companies from Göta Livgarde and a company of coast gunners.

Swedish artillerymen and Russian cannons in Haraldsbyn, Åland

Prussian Jägerbattalion no 14, the German battalions at Åland