Intramilitary Relations and Officer Esprit De Corps in the Emerging Interwar Finnish Armed Forces

Abstract

This article investigates how officer esprit de corps was formed in the emerging interwar Finnish armed forces. The Finnish officer corps emerged during a devastating civil war from two competing groups: older Russian-educated and younger and more radical German-trained jaeger officers. Their relationship turned into a serious conflict during the 1920s. Mesolevel institutional cohesion has been sparsely examined in past scholarship, where corps esprit has usually been taken for granted. This article introduces the concept of intramilitary relations and presents seven sociological factors that can affect officer esprit de corps: ideology, identity, patronage, military experience, generation, class, and professional institutions. As intramilitary relations are closely linked to broader civil–military relations, the article also sheds light on to date largely underexplored Finnish civil–military relations. The Finnish case shows that while military institutions are crucial for esprit in the long run, without consensus, institutions can be used as instruments for power struggles and weaken cohesion.

Introduction

What became the armed forces of independent Finland were cobbled together from the ultimately victorious republican “White” forces that had prevailed in the devastating civil war against socialist “Reds” that had erupted after the declaration of independence in December 1917. The results were rudimentary and ad hoc in a poor and divided post-civil war state, where a strong military was deemed necessary for maintaining both domestic and international order.

On November 24, 1918, representatives of older Russian-educated and younger German-trained Finnish officers, as well as the minister of war, the head of the army and at least four other generals gathered in Helsinki to contemplate how they could strengthen the cohesion of the heterogenous and quarreling officer corps. The chosen method for uniting these competing officer groups was establishing an Officers’ Union (Helsingin Sanomat, 1918). This decision reflected views later expressed in military sociology. For Huntington (1957, pp. 53–54), the development of the officer esprit de corps and professional competence toward the end of the 19^th century “inevitably reflected the extent to which professional institutions were introduced.” Abrahamsson (1972, pp. 67, 151) in turn stressed the military profession’s emphasis on cooperation, comradeship and cohesion, and argued that professionalization furthermore concerns “the homogenization of outlooks and behavior.”

Four years to the day after the initial meeting, the board of the Officer’s Union emphasized to the minister of defense and the head of the army that “the prerequisite for the success of the army is a united, unanimous officer corps.” The board recounted the difficulties of establishing the armed forces in 1918 because of officers’ heterogeneity. Most officers had since joined the Union, which had successfully “built bridges between different [officer] groups” and officers with different educational background “with means typical of a comradely association” (Finnish Officers’ Union, 1922).

”Comradely association”, however, hardly characterized the intramilitary conflict that continued to erode the nascent Finnish officer unity, or esprit de corps. The conflict ultimately concerned power and whether the older or the younger jaeger officers should lead the armed forces and assume positions of power, which ensured resources and social status.

The board meeting on 30 October 1924 began with the older officers’ main representative’s presentation of several board members’ letters of resignation. The resigning officers felt that there was no point in continuing their work as board members because the Union had failed to resolve the intramilitary conflict (Finnish Officers’ Union, 1924b).

Left unwritten in the minutes is that by then, the jaeger officers had succeeded in blackmailing civilian politicians to dismiss most older officers from top military positions. The introduction of a professional institution aiming to “build bridges” between the heterogenous officer corps had failed. Homogeneous Finnish officer esprit was not built on comradeship, but through purging competitors.

This article makes three contributions to existing literature on civil–military relations and military sociology. The first comes from the introduction of the concept of intramilitary relations. Whereas civil–military relations focus on interaction between civilian and military actors, intramilitary relations refer to interaction between various groups that encompass the broader military sector. The concept allows more fine-grained sociological analysis of mesolevel institutional cohesion within armed forces, which to date remains relatively understudied (Sundberg & Ruffa, 2021). The second contribution comes from an investigation of sociological factors which explain this cohesion, here called corps esprit. As classic theories of civil–military relations assume strong corps esprit, they leave its formation virtually unexplored. The third contribution is the empirical description of the origins of the Finnish armed forces, including its almost unexplored civil–military relations (Käihkö & Honig, 2024; Killinen, 1983).

The next section focuses on theory and discusses intramilitary relations and corps esprit. It identifies seven sociological factors—identity, ideology, patronage, military experience, age, class, and professional institutions—that can influence mesolevel cohesion. The third section discusses the methods used. The fourth section focuses on the formation of the Finnish officer corps during the civil war. The fifth section zooms in on the roots of the Finnish intramilitary conflict between the German-trained jaegers and the tsar’s officers. The sixth section focuses on the “cleansing” of the latter in the 1924 jaeger “mutiny,” and the seventh on the analysis of Finnish intramilitary relations through the seven factors. The concluding section revisits the relevance of these factors for intramilitary relations in interwar Finland and beyond.

Theory

Whereas theories of civil–military relations explore the relationship between society and the armed forces, the related concept of intramilitary relations focuses on the relationships between groups within the broader military sector itself. While the existence of various groups is most evident in armed forces suffering from intramilitary conflicts, heterogeneity within armed forces does not automatically cause conflict. What is required is collective identity—“a perception of a shared status or relations”—that identifies cleavages and differentiates officers from one another so that they can be addressed through collective action (Kim, 2012, p. 704).

Intramilitary relations can be envisioned as a scale, where mutiny and even civil war can be found at one extreme. While the other extreme is characterized by amiable relations, the division of modern armed forces into various services alone means that lesser conflicts are common in the form of interservice competition (Huntington, 1961). Unresolved conflicts between groups can nevertheless sharpen intergroup differences at the cost of institution-wide esprit de corps.

Esprit de corps connotes and is often used as a synonym for corporateness (Janowitz, 1964), mesolevel institutional cohesion (Henderson, 1993; Käihkö, 2018b; Sundberg & Ruffa, 2021), professionalism (Huntington, 1957; King, 2025), and organizational commitment within a military body (Gal, 1985). As Huntington (1957, pp. 9–10) puts it, “the members of a profession share a sense of organic unity and consciousness of themselves as a group apart from laymen.” Different groups can be found in virtually all armed forces. The group identities necessary for intramilitary conflicts mentioned above nevertheless require the existence of both weak overall and stronger within-group esprit.

While previous investigations of the Finnish armed forces emphasize the importance of corps esprit, they too tend to take it for granted. For instance, Finland’s performance in the Second World War has been explained by high cohesion within Finnish society and military (Mälkki, 2008; Tuunainen, 2016). Once established, intramilitary solidarity and better harmonization between mesolevel armed forces and the macrolevel society no doubt helped Finland face the Soviet forces with a more united front (Käihkö, 2018b). Missing here, too, is an explanation of how this institutional cohesion formed in the first place from the uncompromising start described in the introduction.

Classic civil–military literature provides only weak answers, although the higher institutional level of analysis guides the investigation toward sociology instead of the sociopsychological interpersonal relations emphasized on micro-level study of cohesion (Siebold, 2024). In Huntington’s telling officer corps gradually emerged as an autonomous social institution toward the end of the 19^th century. The development of the officer esprit de corps and professional competence “inevitably reflected the extent to which professional institutions were introduced,” but also linked to ideological differences over domestic politics, a weakening of anti-intellectualism and the transformation of individualistic “aristocratic class spirit into a military caste spirit” (Huntington, 1957, pp. 53–54; also see Abrahamsson, 1972, p. 69; Tocqueville, 1969). In European militaries aristocracy remained a powerful force. Huntington can furthermore be criticized for describing the end-state, not the process that leads to it (Finer, 2002; Jones, 1957): by his account, competent professional officers ascribe to a corporate “military caste spirit.” As a result, they do not suffer from issues related to intramilitary or civil–military relations.

Professionalism has been described as based on three essential characteristics: expertise, responsibility/ethics, and corporateness (Abrahamsson, 1972; Huntington, 1957; Janowitz, 1964). None of these was in abundant supply in post-Civil War Finland.

Beginning with expertise, the German-trained jaegers were too young, and many of the officers of the old Finnish army, who had not served in Russia, were too old or inexperienced to lead the armed forces. Neither was it clear to whom one should be responsible or ethically answerable, nor whether most of the officers cared much for democracy or civilian leadership in the manner assumed by more contemporary views of civil–military relations. Despite first receiving the right to vote in 1944, the recurrent use of blackmail and smear campaigns by Finnish officers during the interwar years must be understood as a form of military intervention in politics (Finer, 2002). Corporateness, in turn, was undermined by the persistent intramilitary conflict between the two groups of officers that ultimately concerned “control over the selection, socialization and promotion of members” (Abrahamsson, 1972, p. 156).

Classic literature on civil–military relations says little about the factors that affect officer esprit de corps. According to Abrahamsson (1972, p. 69), it helps if professionals are recruited from similar social strata. Another field that has touched the question of establishing corps esprit comes from the investigation of how competing military forces merge after civil war. Even this literature emphasizes the importance of ideology, but also identity (for instance, see Licklider, 2014). Common to both literatures is the notion that civil–military relations of various groups within a military often influence intramilitary relations.

A careful reading of broader (military) sociological literature provides five other factors that can influence intramilitary relations either by themselves or through ideology and identity. These include patronage, military experience, generation, class, and professional institutions. All these seven factors should naturally be understood as theoretical ideal types.

Identity can be based on sociological factors such as membership in an ethnic group, origins in a particular region within a state (Janowitz, 1964, p. 95; Kim, 2012; Kopõtin, 2019), religion (Janowitz, 1964, pp. 97–99), speaking a distinct language (Connor, 1994) or affiliation to social organizations like the Freemasons (Thomas, 1935).

Ideology affects intramilitary relations at large. The officer corps is typically described as being “above politics,” yet as a politically conservative caste, they are hardly unpolitical, as conservatism typically entails upholding the status quo (Janowitz, 1964, pp. 233–242). That said, officers have historically viewed politics as a dirty, dishonorable, and divisive business. As the actively political Chief of the German General Staff, Wilhelm Groener argued in September 1919, “political activities in the army mean the end of all comradeship and all discipline” (quoted in Carsten, 1973, p. 58). Views about government or military policy, too, can affect intramilitary relations, for instance, during unpopular wars (Gal, 1985; Lebel, 2014; Rose, 1982).

Patronage can influence loyalties and interests. Simply put, patrons tend to support local forces to further their own interests. These actors’ military culture—values, norms and assumptions regarding the main missions of the military and how they are solved, as well as civil–military relations, internal structure and resources (Wilson, 2008)—can be imprinted on the forces they support, for instance, through training. Organizational culture has in previous literature been directly compared to corps esprit (Harste, 2020). This raises the question of whether several cultures can comfortably exist within a single military body.

A tangible outcome of patronage concerns military experience, which can be considered a fourth factor. Military experience concerns both theoretical education and firsthand practice. On one hand, military experience often affects rank—especially if formal education is deemed necessary for promotion. Some have gone as far as to argue that training defines the professional military (King, 2025; Strachan, 2006). On the other hand, during times of war and especially when armed forces are established, promotion can be unprecedently quick in a way prone to cause friction. Finally, experience in less formalized militia or rebel forces can further contribute to views about war and civil–military relations that differ greatly from those expressed in traditional military doctrines (Cohen, 2003, p. 143ff).

The fifth factor concerns generation and age. Generation affects worldview (Neundorf & Smets, 2015), and hence ideology. In the formal military structure, seniority furthermore tends to correspond with rank (Janowitz, 1964, p. 6), and hence power. Resentment may arise from perceived disproportionate elite status of senior military officers, as well as grievances about combat conditions experienced by junior ranks (Dwyer, 2024).

The sixth factor is class, a broad sociological concept that has economic, political, and social effects (Edgell, 1993). While the modern ideal has been that the officer corps should not mirror any social strata, the officer corps’ self-conception as leaders suggests that this might actually not be the case (Janowitz, 1964, p. 80). For instance, despite the gradual decline of noble officers, their attitudes, codes and ways of life became adopted even by other officers (Carsten, 1973, p. 3) as a means to socialize them into a higher class (Abrahamsson, 1972, p. 67).

The seventh factor concerns professional institutions, which, as noted, Huntington (1957, pp. 53–54) and Abrahamsson believe are crucial for professionalization. In emerging armed forces harmonization concerns rank, training and attitudes. These can be affected through formalized bureaucracy, exercises, military journals, and professional associations. In the long run, officer education can shape future officers in a way that minimizes cleavages (Finer, 2002) through professional socialization (Caforio, 2018). Yet professional institutions can also be wielded as instruments in power struggles. As a result, they can foster both unity and division.

Method

This theory-building article explores intramilitary relations and the factors that explain the formation of esprit de corps. The investigation began as deductive theory-testing but soon changed into a more explorative and inductive theory-building because previous literature does not explain the formation of officer corps esprit. This is also partly why the emerging interwar Finnish armed forces were chosen as an explorative case: they offer a relatively recent and well-documented case of a serious intramilitary conflict in an emerging Western military, soon after lauded for its strong cohesion.

Most previous research has treated the Finnish officer conflicts uncritically and at times favorably (Halila, 2018, p. 173; Lackman, 2000). The contentious and constitutionally questionable nature of the Finnish officer conflicts means that it is usually quickly glossed over in later officer memoirs and official historiography that understandably emphasize corporateness instead of division. As a result, some written sources about the events have likely been destroyed or remain in closed archives. The empirical analysis in this article is based on existing primary and secondary Finnish and Swedish-language sources—especially letters and memoirs of jaegers who later assumed leading roles and whose collections can therefore be found in the collections of the National Archives of Finland, biographies and memoirs of Finnish officers and politicians, contemporary newspaper articles and documents from the Finnish Officers’ Union located at the Archives of Salaried Employees.

The Formation of the Finnish Armed Forces

Independent Finland emerged because of the disintegration of the Russian Empire caused by the First World War. This caused a power vacuum in the autonomous grand duchy of Finland, which declared independence in December 1917. The same power vacuum nevertheless also led to a Finnish civil war. While Finland had not directly participated in the World War, especially the jaegers’ experience and the Russian revolutionaries’ example provided a framework where violence was an integral element of nation- and state-building (Ahlbäck, 2018).

Because the erstwhile army of the autonomous Russian Grand Duchy of Finland had been gradually abolished during a period of Russification between 1901 and 1905, the bulk of the forces that fought in the civil war consisted of indigenously recruited ad hoc militias. The war was characterized by amateurism. Warfare was passive because of weak command and control and a lack of trained and disciplined forces. Arms were limited, mobility was poor due to winter conditions and the poor road and railroad network. Under the circumstances, it was the White Army’s emphasis to create a more organized force through training and establishing command that made a difference (Roselius, 2006).

Central to this effort were older Russian-educated officers, but also Swedish ones. While Sweden officially remained neutral for domestic and foreign policy reasons, Swedish officers were granted leave to serve on the White side as volunteers. All in all, around 1,100 Swedes served in the White Army, including the headquarters (Hoppu, 2009). In addition, about 1,500 Finns had sought service in the Russian military during the World War. Another 1,800 had committed treason against the tsar and sought military training from imperial Germany to liberate Finland from the Russian yoke. The White-dominated Senate also invited Germany to intervene on its side. Aside from regular forces and material support, Germany sent back the jaegers who had served in the Royal Prussian Jaeger Battalion Number 27. These forces included 400 newly promoted officers and 700 non-commissioned officers.

In January 1918 the White Senate proclaimed the Guard militias as its army and nominated Mannerheim to lead it to restore order in Finland. He soon turned to conscription to reinforce the White army. On 18 February, the Senate activated the conscription law from 1878 that obligated 21–39-year-old men to serve.

Conscripts were organized into jaeger-led brigades, which served alongside volunteer Guard units. By the end of the war, two-thirds of the White Army consisted of conscripts registered to local Guard chapters. While the volunteer Guards were motivated, they were also ill-disciplined and felt that they could refrain from executing displeasing orders. In contrast to the politically reliable Guards, many conscripts inevitably harbored sympathies for the Red side. Jaegers, in turn, despised conscripts for being conscripts and applied harsh Prussian discipline in training and command. The conscripts understandably reacted with animosity when at least a few dozen of them were executed (Manninen, 1974, pp. 44–48, 195–196; Upton, 1980, p. 349).

The Civil War only lasted for about a hundred days. Approximately 200,000 fought in the war, with 36,000 Finns killed out of a population of just over three million. Only a third of those killed perished in battle. Of the remaining, half were victims of executions and terror. The remaining half were Reds who perished to disease, hunger, and violence during a four-month period after the war in prison camps established by the victorious White side. Casualties included about 2,500 foreign citizens, the vast majority Russians (Tikka, 2018, p. 109).

The Finnish armed forces were built on the foundation established by the White forces during the civil war. After inviting Germany to intervene, Finland subsequently risked becoming a German vassal. This, and especially the German designs for the armed forces, caused many pro-Entente officers to leave. For instance, Mannerheim resigned at the end of May. Germany furthermore expelled Swedes from the military and relied more on jaegers when it began to organize the Finnish armed forces according to German—not Finnish—priorities.

The Kaiser’s abdication and Germany’s defeat in the World War in mid-November caused a radical change of course in Finland. The Senate had invited Prince Frederick Charles of Hesse to become the Finnish monarch. He renounced his claim to the throne, and Mannerheim was urged to serve as the Finnish regent in hopes of making amends with the Allies. Several other older officers returned in his wake and assumed top positions within the rudimentary armed forces.

Finns were starving, Finland remained unrecognized by the victors of the World War, was at war with a turbulent Soviet Russia, and was threatened by Swedish expansionism. Even the domestic political situation was volatile—the nascent republic had no less than 17 governments between 1917 and 1930. Cleavages exacerbated by the civil war and rising Finnish nationalism polarized the society, which contained a sizable (11%) Swedish-speaking minority. A strong military was deemed necessary for ensuring both domestic order and international security.

While power had remained in the hands of the White victors, the German defeat forced Finland to heed Allied demands for democratization. Fear of a socialist resurgence, however, caused the re-emergence of the Guards as the guarantor of White domestic order. The volunteer Guards became a cheap force reserve, assisted in police tasks, and helped with civic education. Moreover, they focused on keeping the left in check and ensuring that socialists could not win through ballots. This risked turning the Guards into an undemocratic bourgeois class force (Selén, 2001).

Despite their disagreements, the two groups of officers were conservative and staunchly anti-communist. Their anti-communism nevertheless complicated conscription from the political left. While the risks inherent for providing military training for potential domestic enemies were recognized, armed forces were equally perceived to possess an unparalleled role in fostering patriotic and law-abiding citizens—which could even work with “societally” “sick (psychopaths),” i.e., “homegrown communists” (Olkkonen, 1923b, p. 159, for the first part, see Olkkonen, 1923a). A system of filtering conscripts based on their political reliability was nevertheless devised. In effect, those deemed politically unreliable were banned from receiving reserve and non-commissioned officer training.

While this helped with safeguarding the military from the parts of society that did not share the White victors’ worldview, it did not solve the intramilitary conflicts between the Russian-educated and jaeger officers.

Origins of the Officer Conflict

It is important to recognize at the outset that neither of the two groups of officers was uniform, yet the existence of two distinct and competing groups of officers became apparent immediately with the jaegers’ return to Finland on 25 February 1918. Many jaegers saw collaboration between jaegers and “Russian” officers like Mannerheim as outright impossible (Donner, 1934; Thesleff, 1919; Upton, 1980, p. 343). There were also disagreements about how to win the war. The jaegers had devised plans together with the Germans and organized themselves to establish Finnish independence. While most jaegers probably were republicans, they in effect fought for the Kaiser and a Finnish monarchy under his control (Lackman, 2000, p. 720). The jaegers’ plan envisaged that most jaegers would quickly form a jaeger brigade together with the best Guards formations. This more homogeneous force “would in a manner conforming with the modern German art of war pave the way and break all opposition” (Thesleff, 1919, pp. 109–111).

Mannerheim, in turn, saw the united jaeger force and their commander, Lieutenant Colonel Wilhelm Thesleff, as competition. Mannerheim despised Thesleff, a fellow tsar’s officer who began to collaborate with his German enemies after Thesleff’s capture in Riga in September 1917. Mannerheim also felt that the German intervention weakened his own standing. Mannerheim’s solution was to divide the jaegers to train conscripts, which, after some hesitation, he realized he could not do without (Hoppu, 2009, p. 134).

The disagreement about strategy was immediately politicized as jaegers appealed directly to members of the senate. If their demands were not met, they threatened to disregard orders and march straight to the front “and take warfare in their own hands” (Thesleff, 1919, p. 113). Mannerheim, in turn, threatened to resign. Internationally, the German intervention made his preferred orientation toward Sweden impossible. Domestically, he felt that victory should be gained predominantly through Finnish efforts: “What is easily obtained does not steel the community and steel is necessary if one wants to stand on one’s own feet and compel others to recognize the newly achieved independence” (Mannerheim quoted in Upton, 1980, p. 350).

Mannerheim’s resignation was refused. To defuse the intramilitary conflict, the 50-year-old general met with three jaeger majors in their 30s. Mannerheim made some concessions (many of which he soon rescinded), including a promise that jaegers would serve under three German officers instead of Russian-educated ones. The jaegers in turn conceded their use as trainers (Upton, 1980, pp. 347–348).

The government, nevertheless worried that Mannerheim’s decisions about nominations ignored political considerations that concerned the national feeling among the majority Finnish-speaking population and the White forces (Donner, 1934, pp. 179–180; Upton, 1980, p. 487). Perceived as a vital domestic political matter, command structure and intramilitary relations within the White Army thus influenced civil–military relations.

This was recognized even by jaeger officers, who continued to ostracize everything they perceived as Russian influence. The White side had not yet celebrated its victory in May when older jaeger officers met to discuss their vision of the future Finnish army. The consensus was that the Russian officers would have to go. A letter conveying this to the senate chairman may well have influenced the nomination of the pro-German Thesleff as the war minister. The pro-Entente Mannerheim did not believe in a German victory. He resigned as the commander of the army, with the Finnish-speaking General Karl Wilkman (from June 1919 the more Finnish-sounding Wilkama) nominated as his replacement by politicians who sought to avoid intramilitary conflicts (Ahtiainen, 2009, p. 131).

The jaeger’s ascendence under German auspices did not solve the conflict between jaegers and the remaining tsar’s officers. In June 1918, some jaegers, for instance, demanded that they should be excused from saluting anyone except jaeger officers: “those now superior officers who had served Russians we despise” (quoted in Lackman, 2000, p. 836).

As noted, these despised officers returned to power after the collapse of the German Empire in November. Thesleff had to go, and Mannerheim returned to rule as a regent. He initially favored the politically reliable and quickly deployable Guards over the military led by his German-trained rivals (Roselius, 2013). Mannerheim’s reign nevertheless proved short-lived because he was deemed to hinder national reconciliation. Partly as a result, he was defeated in the first presidential elections in July 1919 by Kaarlo Juho Ståhlberg, a legalist chairman of the Constitutional Committee.

The Guards and many officers took a strong stance for Mannerheim before the election. Some activists had even prompted him to seize power instead of accepting the form of government that led to the presidential election. On the day of the election, a delegation of jaegers visited Ståhlberg and demanded that he withdraw his candidacy. Mannerheim’s close ally, the Chief of the General Staff, threatened Ståhlberg with an insurrection, and other officers with mass resignation. Two months after soundly defeating Mannerheim with his program to mend societal divisions, Ståhlberg received a letter signed by 32 jaegers who threatened to assassinate him if he did not resign. Undeterred, Ståhlberg would continue to speak against the military’s and the Guards’ unconstitutional interference in politics (Hentilä & Hentilä, 2022, pp. 75–76, 88; Suomi, 2023, pp. 23, 39).

A month after Mannerheim’s defeat, the Guards organized a parade of 7500 Guardsmen in Helsinki in his honor, where the head of the local Guards chapter—jaeger major Unio Sarlin—lamented that “democrats” had acted against “us” in the elections. The Guards in the capital “would maintain their readiness to take to arms if societal security demanded.” Legality, however, did not reside in the democratically elected president: “his heart cannot beat in unison with our hearts.” Mannerheim, in turn, was described as “the unequaled leader of White Finland, the only one whose will can become our law.” The liberal newspaper that joined the chorus of criticizing Sarlin’s speech under the headline “this already goes too far” described it as “the most serious insult against the spirit of the rule of law.” The speech was interpreted either as repeating the way the Reds had disregarded law during the civil war, or as threatening an undemocratic insurrection (Helsingin Sanomat, 1919; see even Suur-Karjala, 1919). Democratic control of the armed forces was to remain a recurrent concern until 1932, when the Guards rebelled in Mäntsälä.

The Jaeger Mutiny

Sarlin’s speech reflects how jaegers embodied a new direction for the Finnish nation-state, which nationalists believed could only emerge from a national foundation. Democratization and military service offered social mobility for Finnish-speakers in a society and state previously dominated by Swedish- and Russian-speaking elites. The transition from imperial rule also pressured officers and other elites from the ancien regime to align their inner allegiances and outward posture to the task of building a nation-state. In Finland, this pressure was, above everything, about homogenization and nationalization. As a result, the jaegers’ struggle to “cleanse” the armed forces from “Russian” influence, military reform and intramilitary power struggles were intertwined with broader nation- and state-building efforts.

When neither reforms nor the jaegers’ demand for homogenization and hence promotion progressed, the jaegers in January 1924 began to organize the jaeger “mutiny” or “strike.” On 19 April jaeger leaders agreed that all jaegers should resign, lest their demands, which included the replacement of many of the most senior “Russian” officers were met. The resignation of hundreds of officers would have had dire consequences for the armed forces, which already struggled with personnel.

While activists supported the mutiny, others saw it as a breach of both military discipline and democracy, where officers in active service forced the hand of not only their superiors, but even democratically elected politicians (Sihvo, 1956, p. 39; Suomen Sosiaalidemokraatti, 1924a). Older officers who had personally witnessed the revolutions in Russia deemed the mutiny a political and unpatriotic “act of insurrection” (Talvela, 1924). Even some leading jaegers cautioned against “revolutionary” “extreme measures” (Heinrichs, 1920; E. Heinrichs, 1924b), which they described as “ugly and unmilitary.” While in favor of concentrating the armed forces’ organization in a way that would pave the way for the expulsion of the tsarist officers, they questioned the ultimate goal of bringing the politically divisive Mannerheim to lead the armed forces as politically unrealistic (E. Heinrichs, 1924a).

Indeed, the left especially distrusted the political motives of the mutiny and noted a paradox with nationalist rhetoric and deeds. If the mutiny aimed to nationalize the army through the removal of “Russian” officers, why should the “Russianized” Mannerheim, who derived from Swedish-speaking aristocracy and did not even know Finnish, return to lead the majority Finnish-speaking army (Suomen Sosiaalidemokraatti, 1924b)? Neither would Ståhlberg agree to nominate Mannerheim, his past rival.

The next minister of defense was the 33-year-old jaeger Lieutenant Colonel Lauri Malmberg. Malmberg had become the commander of the Guards because of the so-called “Guards’ crisis” in 1921. The crisis erupted when the commander of the Helsinki chapter, Major-General Paul von Gerich, wrote a thinly anonymized op-ed criticizing Finnish foreign policy as anti-German (“v.G,” 1921). This enraged foreign ambassadors, who complained that an officer in state payroll was improperly meddling in politics. The government had to act and rein in overly political officers (Selén, 2001, pp. 90–91).

The Guards commander, Didrik von Essen, nevertheless refused to fire von Gerich. Ståhlberg then replaced von Essen with the Chief of the General Staff Karl Emil Berg, who promptly proceeded to dismiss von Gerich. Berg soon committed suicide after being ostracized by his fellow officers (Ilkka, 1921).

Berg’s successor, Malmberg, was related to Ståhlberg through marriage, and his nomination was overall understood to decrease the power of the Swedish-speaking officers (Ståhlberg, 1985). His nomination nevertheless also meant that jaegers—many of whom perceived the more ideological Guards to offer better possibilities for advancement than the armed forces dominated by “Russian” officers—entrenched their positions within the Guards. Already in 1921, 11 of the 21 permanent regional guard commanders were jaegers (Selén, 2001, pp. 90–91).

Even if the Guards remained a staunchly bourgeois movement, Malmberg’s emphasis on professionalization and focusing on the Russian threat weakened the divisive class politics that harked back to the civil war. The case was the same with the Guards’ far-right anti-democratic tendencies. Their increased loyalty to the state helped keep Finland away from the fate of several European countries, where the strengthening of comparable movements led to autocracy (Selén, 2001, pp. 107–114, 118). The jaegarization of the Guards nevertheless improved jaegers’ position vis-à-vis older officers. The Guards soon joined the campaign to rid the army of “Russian” officers.

When Malmberg was invited to the government, he, on May 30, 1924, presented the prime minister with the jaegers’ list of ten demands, which included the replacement of the head of the army, his chief of staff, the chief of the general staff, as well as other top “Russian” officers. Malmberg (1924) added that “I consider it a natural prerequisite for accepting the assignment that the current crisis situation in the officer corps is resolved in a way that satisfies the patriotic and national officers”. No one was deemed more patriotic than the jaegers. Mutineering officers would naturally escape punishment.

The jaegers’ success was guaranteed, but their final victory would only come in May 1926. Wilkama’s replacement was made more difficult by the fact that he was Finnish-speaking and religious. Ståhlberg had postponed the problem by sending Wilkama to study abroad. The diary of Lauri Kristian Relander, Ståhlberg’s successor, offers a painstaking reading of a growing frustration with the head of the army. In Relander’s (1967) telling, Wilkama stubbornly clung to a belief that the democratically elected politicians’ power over the military was a mere formality. This aligned poorly with democratic civil–military relations and the law to the extent that he was impossible to work with. Because of political concerns, Relander replaced Wilkama with the highest-ranking Finnish-speaking jaeger officer available, who furthermore had proven his democratic credentials. The choice fell on Aarne Sihvo, the first jaeger promoted to general and a former member of the parliament for the liberal National Progressive Party. Because of his studies in Italy, he had furthermore not visibly participated in the jaeger mutiny. The alternative was Malmberg, but he was merely a colonel and deemed indispensable for keeping peace within the Guards.

While Sihvo’s appointment cemented the jaegers’ control over the armed forces, he soon brought to the surface more latent conflicts among (jaeger) officers. The first one concerned the Swedish language. The board of the Finnish Officers’ Union (1924a) had already, in November 1924, discussed public attacks against Swedish-speaking officers, but decided to refrain from drawing more attention to them by taking a more active stance. In October 1926, Sihvo ordered that officers should only speak Finnish when on duty. The order may have intended to protect Sihvo from detractors who claimed that he had replaced the “Finnish” Wilkama on behalf of Swedish ones, but simultaneously it laid bare language stratification among jaegers. Educated Swedish speakers had been overrepresented among the first batch that reached Germany. Finnish-speaking jaegers were keenly aware of the fact that they consequently received faster promotions over their Finnish-speaking peers, especially those from more humble backgrounds (Lackman, 2000, p. 708).

The second conflict concerned civil–military relations. Unlike many activists, Sihvo sought to build bridges toward social democrats in the name of national reconciliation, and to strengthen constitutional democracy against both communism and fascism. Like Wilkama, even Sihvo saw the Guards as an unwelcome—and for reconciliation unhelpful—competition. His attempts to subordinate the Guards under his command created schisms between Sihvo and, respectively, Malmberg, Relander, and the more activist officers. When the Guards rose in a failed rebellion in Mäntsälä in 1932, Sihvo stood with the government. This led to a complete breakdown of Sihvo’s relations with not only the Guards, but also many, if not most, of his fellow officers, who sympathized with the rebels. Sihvo was moved aside in January 1933 (Saarikoski, 1997, pp. 206–208). Perhaps ironically, Mannerheim—the gray eminence who had stayed above everyday politics, but whom especially many officers had come to perceive as the best alternative to lead Finland—had by then returned as the chairman of Finland’s Defense Council. He would assume overall command of the military in the event of war. The untouchable “Russian” general thus ultimately overshadowed even the leading jaeger officers.

Analysis

Beginning with identity, the jaegers’ labeling of all old officers as “Russian” shows how jaegers sought to discriminate against their more senior competitors by associating them with the negative category of “Russianness” and oppression. During a time of militant Finnish nationalism, such an association allowed for delegitimization (Bar-Tal, 1990). This paved the way for their subsequent purge.

Considering that Finland had just declared itself independent from Russia, the criteria for “Russianness” were bound to be fluid. Time spent in Russia—a sin associated with all tsar’s officers as they had served in the Russian military—seemed to suffice. Physical absence from Finland was deemed to equal alienation from Finnish circumstances (that jaegers were exempted exemplifies the prevailing double standards). Other criteria included “Russian upbringing,” Russian or even recently acquired Finnish citizenship and lack of proficiency in Finnish and Swedish (Finnish Officers’ Union, 1919).

Ethnicity in Finland was mainly connected to language. While occasional mentions of locality were made, rotation was designed to root this out among the officer corps (Abrahamsson, 1972, p. 43). In an emerging independent state, the Finnish language became an important marker. Many older officers were Swedish speakers. Even Mannerheim—for some time—Finlandized his first name as “Kustaa.” It was not uncommon for Swedish-speaking Finns to be called “Eastern Swedes” in a way that suggested foreignness and questionable patriotism. Russian-speakers and those of Orthodox faith were widely ostracized.

As to ideology, the older officers were reactionaries and primarily anti-communist; the jaegers were radical and anti-Russian. This difference is illustrated by Mannerheim’s reaction when, in February 1916, he first heard that Finns had sought military training in Germany. Mannerheim not only thought the act constituted treason but even sought to organize a comparable volunteer force to the Russian military. While his effort failed, criticism of the jaegers was common in Finland during the World War (Lackman, 2000, p. 573).

The jaegers’ strong ideology is, in turn, explained by the fact that they sought German military training first and foremost as a means to national liberation. Unsurprisingly, some continued to view Mannerheim with skepticism long after the civil war.

These diverging ideological views formed the core cause of conflict between the tsar’s and jaeger officers. During and immediately after the World War Mannerheim continued to believe that the white forces would regain control of Russia. He therefore advocated joining the Russian civil war to rid Russia of Bolshevism. Jaegers, in turn, sided with the Finnish White activists who “racialized their political views and identities and also implemented these ideas in practice” (Halila, 2018, p. 172). They consequently prioritized Finnish nationalism and independence, as well as the military expeditions aimed to create a greater Finland at Russia’s territorial expense. Neither group was instinctively drawn to democracy. For instance, von Gerich was later implicated in the 1922 assassination of the Minister of the Interior, Heikki Ritavuori, who had stopped the flow of activists to fight in Russia (Lehtinen, 2021). The jaegers’ Prussianism in turn “emphasized discipline and order and despised democracy” (Lackman, 2000, p. 208). This strong emphasis on discipline has been explained by disciplinary problems among the jaegers’ heterogenous ranks in Germany (Halila, 2018, pp. 170–171).

The jaegers’ Prussianism, of course directly derived from their foreign patronage. In 1928, one jaeger officer explained that the problem with “Russian” officers was that they were “Russianized, essentially non-national persons.” Their actions betrayed “true Russian fear of responsibility. . . and true Russian inability” (Hägglund, 1928). These kinds of prevalent racist views about the jaegers’ rival officers’ essentialized identity and cultural traits had been strengthened by their German patrons. The jaegers’ origins as a German proxy force in turn raised the question whether they served Finnish or German interests (Lackman, 2000).

Military experience formed an important imbalance between the tsar’s and jaeger officers. Many tsarist officers had received advanced Russian military education, and several had commanded large formations during the World War. Others had entered civilian life and hence let their military knowledge become antiquated. In comparison, the jaegers received no higher military education in Germany and possessed mere months of frontline experience before the Civil War. Jaeger’s fighting experience mostly came from the Civil War. These experiences were highlighted to offset their lack of military education and to strengthen the jaegers’ tenuous claim to military expertise. This task was helped by a situation where few officers had had opportunities to actually wage war (Ahlbäck, 2018, p. 238).

The jaegers’ promotions in Germany surprised Mannerheim, who learned about them only when the jaegers returned to Finland (Upton, 1980, p. 344). He may also have felt that he had no choice but to promote older and more experienced officers lest they be outranked by the younger jaeger officers. Quick promotions of officers and of non-commissioned officers to officer ranks during the Civil War and its aftermath clearly caused friction.

Despite attempts to guarantee possibilities for career advancement in the absence of a Finnish war college (Ignatius, 1922), the jaegers especially felt that their limited access to further military education stalled their careers (Saarikoski, 1997, p. 142; Malmberg, 1924). Because of the prioritization of the Cadet school, the college was only established in 1924. By then, many jaegers had decided that their chances of advancing their careers and politics were better in the more ideological Guards. This caused another point of contestation between jaegers and some older officers. Wilkama, for instance, felt that the Guards were a political, rather than a military organization—which furthermore stole officers from the army. The Guards, in turn, continued to consider themselves volunteers, and hence above submission to humiliating military discipline (Tuomivaara, 1924). As a result, the relations between the two organizations remained tense.

While elsewhere staff officers have bickered with frontline officers (Carsten, 1973, p. 56), in Finland, perceived differences in military culture affected by foreign patronage created friction. Aside from military principles that concerned waging war, real or presumed differences also appeared in discussions about military practices, for instance, concerning discipline, training, and the responsibilities of Finnish officers (Stahel, 1924). The German-inspired jaegers felt that Finnish conscripts could neither be trained through bullying nor led from behind, as Russian serfs could. Other differences derived from French and German military thought. The jaegers had adopted the emphasis on the offense from Germany and criticized as exceedingly passive the older officers’ defensive focus that reflected French military thought (Arimo, 1990, p. 150). Overall jaegers’ approach to war has been described as protofascist: they emphasized morality while deriding the role of technology in war (Halila, 2018, p. 175).

Generation no doubt constituted an important factor in the Finnish intramilitary relations during the interwar years. Older independence activists had a more positive outlook on Russia than the younger generation. After conquering Finland from Sweden in 1809, Russia brought peace, prosperity, and political rights. The older activists had sought Finnish independence through peaceful and legal means. The younger activists, in turn, best remembered the later Russification, or policies devised to strip Finns of their autonomy, culture, and language. Those who had sought military training from Germany had committed treason. During the years abroad, they adopted continental views of militarized citizenship that accepted violence as a legitimate means for ridding Finland of all Russian influence (Ahlbäck, 2018), including socialism (Halila, 2018, p. 172). Jaegers viewed the older activists as overly passive. These views concerned even the jaegers’ view of the older officers’ pace of much-needed military reforms. From the jaegers' perspective, age disparity also materialized as power disparity.

The two groups were derived to an extent from different class backgrounds. Mannerheim’s and other “Russian” officers’ military education emphasized their pre-existing high societal status. 13,5% of the Russian officers who served in Finland from 1918 to 1924 belonged to hereditary nobility against 1,6% of jaeger officers. Figures for military families were 24,4% and 1,6%, for farmers 7,8% and 21,8% and for professionals, officials, and clergy 65,1% and 68,1%. Lower classes compromised mere 1% and 4%, respectively (Harjula, 2020, p. 544).

This class consciousness clearly contradicted the emphasis on the “peasant” and the democratic nature of the victorious White army. Finland was still very much a class society during the interwar years, where class struggle had only become apparent at the beginning of the century with the onset of democracy. Because of democracy, officer status replicated nobility within the military in their unequal relationship with serfs and soldiers. Unlike the tsar’s officers, whose rank rather reflected their class background, jaeger officers came from Swedish- and Finnish-speaking intelligentsia and prosperous landowning families. Jaeger’s social status thus depended on advancement in military rank. This may have made them more militaristic, “because war makes vacancies and warrants the violation of that law of seniority which is the sole privilege natural to democracy” (Tocqueville, 1969, p. 647).

These six factors separated the two groups of officers from each other. Conversely, the same factors also contributed to the comparatively greater cohesion within the more numerous jaeger group, which allowed them to mutiny against the tsarist officers. In addition to their shared experiences and worldview, the jaegers formed a visibly distinct group of officers during and immediately after the civil war. They wore their own uniforms and, from the spring of 1919 onwards, a German-style jaeger cross, added the prefix jaeger to their military ranks and were much younger than their peers in other countries. For instance, Sihvo was promoted to colonel during the civil war when he was 29. His chief of staff, Major Woldemar Hägglund, was 25.

According to one contemporary, the jaeger major G. Heinrichs (1924), many of the prerequisites of a strong conscript army had to do with the nation and were thus sociological in nature. In addition to them, much depended on officer esprit de corps: “a decent officer corps is therefore an undeniable condition for a combat-ready army.” An “organic, united” officer corps was, in turn, built on “identical education. . . worldview. . . [and] esprit.” As the numerous professional institutions like the older officers’ Cadet club and the Jaeger Union proved, Finland had “officers, but no officer corps.” Neither did shared traditions exist which officer corps could be rooted. The solution was the proper selection, training, and use of officers. Here, the Cadet school stood out as the institution where “officer esprit had to originate.”

The seventh factor, military institutions, was thus deemed both as an impediment and the ultimate solution for establishing officer esprit de corps. Establishing institutions nevertheless takes time and effort. Because the groups professed major differences with the six previous factors, no consensus existed about the nature and function of professional institutions.

Education forms the outlook and behavior of future officers (Caforio, 2018). In 1920, the Officer Union sought to educate its members with a professional journal, which its members, however, had to be forced to subscribe. When it came to more formal education, the Union board recognized that “in established foreign armies. . . growing officer material has been pruned already in military schools” (Finnish Officers’ Union, 1922). The beginnings of the officer corps’ long-term “homogenization of outlooks and behavior” (Abrahamsson, 1972, p. 67) began with military education at the Cadet school. In Finland, the establishment of military schools that provided uniform education approved by the majority of officers nevertheless only became possible after the jaegers had homogenized the armed forces through purging the tsarist officers, and thus gained “control over the selection, socialization and promotion of members” (Abrahamsson, 1972, p. 156).

Conclusions

This explorative article has investigated intramilitary relations and the formation of officer esprit de corps in the emerging interwar Finnish armed forces from an unpromising start. As past studies tend to focus on established and corporate armed forces, neither issue has received much attention. The main contribution of this study comes in the form of the beginnings of a theory of intramilitary relations through seven sociological factors, which can be used to construct corps esprit within militaries: ideology, identity, patronage, military experience, generation, class, and professional institutions. Intramilitary conflict may ensue if corps esprit is established in only parts of the armed forces in a manner that identifies cleavages that need to be addressed through collective action.

The analysis of the Finnish interwar officer conflict emphasizes Finland's being part of Europe. The Finnish interwar intramilitary relations, let alone civil–military relations, were hardly exceptional. Like elsewhere in Europe, even the Finnish officer corps were a political actor. What, nevertheless, complicated things in newly independent Finland were the legacies of two empires within its armed forces. While the analysis of the Finnish interwar officer conflict supports the previous literature’s emphasis on professional institutions, it was found that professional institutions affect officer esprit de corps mainly through homogenization, instead of building bridges between heterogenous groups of officers.

Establishing institutions requires time, resources, and consensus. Absent consensus, institutions can divide, rather than unite. Ultimately, the Finnish jaeger officers resorted to political blackmail to purge their rivals from the armed forces. Only after could they focus on officer education as the more long-term solution for homogenization and establishing officer esprit de corps.

Left unanswered is the question implicitly raised at the outset concerning the Finnish success in the Second World War. After the purge, jaegers rose to positions of power within the armed forces. This, the failed mutiny at Mäntsälä that strengthened parliamentary democracy and the gradual reconciliation between the winners and the losers of the civil war, gradually caused the jaegers’ radicalism to wane.

The force composition within the armed forces also homogenized over time. New officers emerged from the Cadet school and gradually formed the majority of the officer corps. Older tsarist officers disappeared. Whereas in 1921 cadets encompassed 8.1%, jaegers 40.2%, older officers 14.9% and the rest 36.8% of the officer corps, by 1939 the figures were 71.1%, 14.4%, 0.7%, and 13.8%, respectively (Haili, 1978, p. 926; for slightly different figures, see Harjula, 2020, p. 550). Mannerheim assumed command after the Soviet invasion. Ultimately, the famous “miracle of the Winter War” concerned the way the society joined to defend the country against a common Soviet enemy in a manner implausible just a decade prior. Reconciliation, allowing non-communist socialist parties to participate in politics and societal reforms that encouraged economic growth, had enforced national cohesion and hence the reservists’ will to defend the country (Meinander, 2012, p. 54).

This study implies that more attention should be paid to intramilitary relations, especially in emerging militaries. These include especially the ones targeted by training and support missions. To offer two examples, the rapid collapse of the Afghan military in 2021 seems to have caught many policymakers and analysts alike by surprise despite two decades of assistance. The Ukrainian officer corps has, in turn, been described to consist of several “layers” separated by age, foreign (and arguably domestic) patronage, military experience (Dyson & Pashchuk, 2022) and ideology (Käihkö, 2018a; Käihkö & Honig, 2025). While material and basic training offer easily quantifiable factors, it should not be forgotten that force consists of both material and the body that uses it. As Finnish jaegers discovered already in the 1920s, the latter can only be understood through deeper sociological study.