In the first years of the Civil Guard organization, arms were varied in style and few in number. The scarcity of weapons and rounds meant small local forces were passing one or two guns between multiple men. Old Russian soldier rifles (Mosin-Nagant M91) were refurbished to create a Finnish version with a thicker barrel, which […]

When the Civil Guard was founded in 1918, promoting fitness and sports was listed as one of its goals. Each district gained its own advisor when the Guard’s department of physical education was established in 1920. New instructors for various sports were constantly being trained as the popularity of athletics kept growing over the following

A regional system for the mobilization of forces was introduced in May 1934. The Civil Guards were a key part of the structure, as members of the organization formed the core cadre of the troops. The mobilization was carried out by provincial military districts. The Guards played a supporting role, relaying orders and gathering auxiliary

The right-wing movement of the early 1930s culminated in Mäntsälä in 1932. A social democratic assembly at the Ohkola people’s house was interrupted on February 27th when over 400 men surrounded the building while firing shots into the air and ground. This came as no surprise to District Chief Paavo Susitaival and Commander-in-Chief Lauri Malmberg,

In relation to the enforcement of compulsory military service, the Civil Guards provided conscription officials with statements on the character of draftees.  The goal was to prevent communists from getting military training. Having lost the war in 1918, the far left continued their operations underground. Communists gained the upper hand in the Finnish Trade Union

The first commander-in-chief of the Civil Guard was Georg Didrik von Essen in the years 1919–1921. Born into a noble family, von Essen (1864–1936) attended the Hamina Cadet School during 1877–86. He served as an executive officer in a sharpshooter battalion and later as a squadron commander in the Finnish Dragoon Regiment until 1901, after

The Civil Guards, as well as the opposing Red Guards, were formed to fill security deficits caused by Russian uprisings. At the beginning of 1918, the Civil Guards were still in the middle of getting armed and organized. Old officers and NCOs had initially served as instructors, but returning jägers had brought valuable training help

In May 1918, Chief of Rear Services Rudolf Walden assigned a committee to discuss the future of the Civil Guard. Volunteers were faster to act, and in June, a meeting to develop the operations of the Guard was held in Viitasaari among the Guards of Central Finland. A national assembly soon convened in Jyväskylä, where

Defence against gas warfare became a topic of interest in the 1920s after the First World War. Lectures on the subject were first held in 1923, and a school of gas defence was established in Vyborg in 1933. Anti-gas forces became part of the military. Today, they are involved in military engineering, and new recruits