Red Guards win the Finnish Civil War

Ok, my POD is what if the Finnish Socialist Workers' Republic/Red Guards had won the Finnish civil war and taken all of Finland.

Finnish Socialists began the war almost completely in control of the country's industrial south, while their White enemies controlled the larger, but sparsely populated northern regions. The entry of German-trained White Finns, and the German army itself, into Finland forced the Finnish Socialist Workers' Republic to rely heavily on Soviet aid, military and economic, which was sparse.

So how could Red Guards do better or even win?:D
 

yourworstnightmare

Banned
Donor
Ehh, ASB probably. The Whites had real officers, German support and so on...

Best POD; have no emigration to America from Pohjanmaa during the 1800s. Without depopulation the North would also be greatly divided (more farmers without land) and the reds could get a strong foothold there.
 
Ok, my POD is what if the Finnish Socialist Workers' Republic/Red Guards had won the Finnish civil war and taken all of Finland.

Finnish Socialists began the war almost completely in control of the country's industrial south, while their White enemies controlled the larger, but sparsely populated northern regions. The entry of German-trained White Finns, and the German army itself, into Finland forced the Finnish Socialist Workers' Republic to rely heavily on Soviet aid, military and economic, which was sparse.

So how could Red Guards do better or even win?:D

Tough, like yourworstnightmare said. Some men in the Red leadership were capable politicians, bureaucrats, labor organizers and propagandists. Some of them were buffoons and drunks. Exceedingly few of them had any idea at all how to run a war. There was only one former officer amongst the leading Reds, Ali Aaltonen, and he had served as a mere lieutenant in the Russian Army over a decade earlier. So the first thing, in my view, to fix would be in one way or another give the Red Guards some real military leaders; men who would be able to both create a workable organization for the Guards as well as bring even a semblance of order and discipline amongs the very poorly trained militia these troops were in the beginning of the war.

The obvious source for expertise is Russia. There was some co-operation between the Reds and Russian soldiers IOTL, but if you really want it to make an impact, a deal will have to be struck much earlier, one that moves a significant part of the Russian troops in Finland squarely behind the revolution. Or, alternately, Lenin et al. (or their ATL counterparts) are secure enough in Petrograd to send several whole units to Finland in addition to weapons and ammunition.

The pitfall in this plan is, of course, that after earlier measures of Russification Finland was quite anti-Russian. The Whites, IOTL, were initially fighting the war to chase the Russians out of Finland: many of the men were actually surprised to find their opponents speaking Finnish when they reached the frontline. That the Reds allied with the hated Russians was seen amongst the conservatives as damning evidence of betrayal towards Finland: if the co-operation is more widespread than IOTL, the centre-right will use it as an issue to rally their base for more ferocious support for the White cause. Furthermore, anti-Russian feelings were not limited to the White side. There would be necessarily a lot of men in the Red Guards who would refuse to take orders from Russian officers or NCOs.

IOTL, the Whites gained a lot of weapons by disarming Russian troops in the early part of the war. If more of those troops were already allied with the Reds, or even less disorganized they were IOTL in early 1918 they would refuse to disarm and defend themselves. That would at the very least give the Reds more time to try and launch a successful campaign against Pohjanmaa and other White strongholds while the Whites are still underarmed and facing local opposition.

Another point: cause disruption amongst the White leadership. It is hard to completely paralyze the conservative Senate, but there are several ways to make it more indecisive. For example, the Red Guards should be able to round up more conservative leaders in Helsinki: especially capturing Svinhufvud would be a great propaganda coup. IOTL, he avoided capture only narrowly, so it would be easy to have him make one crucial mistake. Mannerheim did also very nearly get into a fatal scuffle with revolutionary soldiers in Russia: if he got wounded badly or died, the White military leadership would lack a clear leader and might succumb to indecision for that crucial strech of time.

Next up, for some reason or another, the Germans will not support the White cause, even by allowing the Jägers to return to Finland. An earlier Brest-Litovsk-analogue might accomplish this: for some reason or another, the German leadership concludes that Finland is a Russian internal problem. Maybe, say, the Finnish declaration of independence is delayed, and/or a Russian/Soviet acceptance to it could not be secured. There was some opposition to the idea of supporting Finland breaking away from Russia in Germany, especially amongst the politicians and diplomats (rather than the army): make the events to conspire so that this view wins out.

The preceding events would also most likely make Stockholm more reluctant to allow Swedish volunteers to go to Finland: this way, the White side will lack some military professionals it had in its ranks IOTL.

So, basically, the Whites would need to have a really stinking luck.:D Even these corrections would not make it likely that the Reds win, but they would at least have a bit easier time trying.

yourworstnightmare said:
Best POD; have no emigration to America from Pohjanmaa during the 1800s. Without depopulation the North would also be greatly divided (more farmers without land) and the reds could get a strong foothold there.

Good point, I had not thought of that. A divided Pohjanmaa would have caused some problems. But avoiding the emigration is another can of worms entirely: considering that it was a mass movement brought about by international as well as strictly Finnish developments, I think that the required POD(s) could conceivably butterfly the civil war entirely or even affect WWI itself in a noticeable way.
 
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