Karl Lennart Oesch
Karl Lennart Oesch (born August 8, 1892 in Pyhäjärvi Vpl , † March 28, 1978 in Helsinki ) was a Finnish lieutenant general in World War II .
Oesch held a number of staff and commanders posts and at the end of the Continuation War from 1940 to 1944 around two thirds of the Finnish armed forces were under his command. Oesch enjoyed an excellent military reputation due to his ability to cope with the most difficult situations. In several crises he was Field Marshal Mannerheim's last trump card.
Origin and early years
Oesch's parents Karl Christian and Anna Barbara Oesch-Stegmann emigrated in 1880 from Schwarzenegg (municipality of Oberlangenegg near Thun ), canton of Bern , to the municipality of Tohmajärvi , district of Vyborg , and succeeded in the dairy industry, particularly in cheese production and in the cheese trade. Karl Lennart was the youngest of six sons. In Sortavala he attended school, from 1911 to 1915 he studied at the University of Helsinki . In 1915 he joined the Finnish hunter movement and went to Germany, where he was merged with other exiles in the 27th Royal Prussian Jäger Battalion and finally got baptized by fire on the Baltic front. So that the Russians would not become aware that Germany was building up separatist Finnish armed forces, the hunter course was disguised as "field master training for scouts". Oesch was a dual citizen, but in 1921 he renounced Swiss citizenship because, as he said, you could only serve one country during a war. In 1920 he married Anna Niskanen and they had two children: son Karl Christian (* 1921) and daughter Ann-Mari (* 1922).
Military career
In 1918 the hunters returned to Finland and took up the fight against "red" Finns and Bolsheviks as " white " officers . Oesch was promoted to captain as one of the first "whites" and took over a battalion on the "Kannas", the Karelian isthmus between the Baltic Sea and Lake Ladoga . In the same year he received the major - and in 1921 the rank of lieutenant colonel . He became a career officer and attended the French Military Academy Saint-Cyr from 1923 to 1926 . There he dealt in particular with artillery and fortress construction, both skills that would later be extremely useful to him. He visited Switzerland several times, and it can be assumed that it was at this time that he came up with the idea of introducing federal army classification, decentralized mobilization and three-hundred-meter shooting in Finland (the Finnish and Swiss armies are the only ones today who train their soldiers to shooting distances of 300 m). Back in Finland he headed the War Academy, and from 1930 to 1940 he served as chief of staff. During this time he vigorously pushed ahead with the construction of the fortress belt on the Kannas, which later became famous as the Mannerheim Line . In 1936 he was promoted to lieutenant general.
The winter war 1939 to 1940 and the intermediate peace
When the Winter War broke out on November 30, 1939, Oesch was Chief of Staff. His preparations had paid off, the Finnish army - albeit poorly equipped - was ready and fought a battle that was watched with astonishment throughout the free world. Oesch's first hour at the front came when the Red Army managed to bypass the Finns at Vyborg across the frozen bay and establish themselves on the west bank in March 1940. Major General Kurt Martti Wallenius , who had been in command of the Vyborg section for three days , collapsed nervously and weakened from excessive alcohol consumption, so that Mannerheim dismissed him on the spot and replaced him with Oesch. The latter immediately put together a makeshift combat group made up of reservists from the Coast Guard and units hastily brought in from Lapland. With this association he succeeded in slowing the advance of the Red Army and inflicting considerable losses on it. The remnants of the Finnish Air Force crushed the bulk of the Soviet troops attacking across the ice from Kronstadt . He managed to straighten and hold the front. The Soviet Union sometimes consented to the armistice of March 13, 1940 because of this act of violence. The marshal was deeply impressed by Oesch's abilities. Even after the end of the winter war, Oesch was again chief of staff for several weeks, then in April 1940 he took over the second Finnish army corps.
The Continuation War 1941 to 1944
On August 22, 1941, almost two months after the outbreak of war, Oesch and his fourth army corps on the right wing of the Karelian Army were given permission to go offensively into the Soviet-occupied Vyborg section. Although he was temporarily out due to overwork, his army corps made rapid progress and on August 29, 1941, Vyborg was withdrawn. In the last days of August 1941, Oesch's forces included three Soviet divisions south of Vyborg. Although part of the enemy was able to break out, all heavy weapons fell into the hands of the Finns and on September 1, 1941, the Soviet troops began to surrender. 9,325 prisoners of war, including the commander of the 43rd Rifle Division, Major General Vladimir Vasilyevich Kirpichnikov , took the Finns to their prison camps, and they also had to bury 7,500 fallen Soviet soldiers. 3,000 soldiers died on the Finnish side. It was arguably the greatest military victory in Finnish military history.
In March 1942, the Finns had reorganized their armed forces into three large units for the stationary trench warfare, which would ultimately last until 1944, and Oesch took over the Olonez combat group between Lake Onega and Lake Ladoga. In the following April, Oesch's troops repelled a tough Soviet attack. They then attached the front and focused on holding it.
The major Soviet offensive in June 1944
On June 9, 1944, the Red Army broke through the Finnish positions on the Kannas. From the Soviet point of view, it was the Vyborg-Petrozavodsk operation , which led to the breakthrough at Kuuterselkä on the Karelian Isthmus in the first days of the war.
The reasons for this were:
- insufficiently intensified expansion of the Finnish positions on the Kannas;
- The 18th Finnish Division on the right wing of the 4th Army Corps was replaced by the 10th Division a few days before the major Soviet offensive;
- the disparity between the effectively existing associations on Kannas and Aunus .
On the morning of June 14, 1944, Oesch received a call from headquarters that made him in command of all Finnish troops on the Finnish isthmus. Mannerheim's telephone message read: “All hell has broken loose on the Kannas. Go there. The troops are under you. Written order follows. "Oesch is said to have loaded his pistol with the words:" If this fails, I will no longer be there. "When he arrived at the emergency room (at noon on June 15), he found that Finland was about to leave to be overrun by the advancing Soviet troops. It was the most critical situation the Finnish army ever went through. Oesch immediately initiated countermeasures, and Mannerheim, who usually always wanted the last word, gave him a free hand. To make matters worse, Oesch only had a partial staff - there was a lack of officers. Immediately his troops began an operational retreat with the aim of carrying out the decisive blow in a suitable key area. Vyborg was lost on June 20, 1944. Oesch managed to group his troops (two thirds of the Finnish armed forces) through skillful reception positions, through delaying resistance and through the ongoing integration of the divisions and brigades arriving from East Karelia and thus the front on the VKT line (Viipuri-Kuparsaari-Taipale) to stabilize, to go over to the defense and to change the combat initiative locally in favor of the Finnish troops. In an area of approx. 12 by 18 kilometers, he destroyed the heads of the advancing Soviet forces with tank and anti-tank troops. Oesch had seen through the plans of his opponents and once again acted on his own initiative, because, contrary to Mannerheim's orders, he did not go over to the counterattack from a standing position, but struck at exactly the right place and with sufficient artillery support. The masterful infantry and radio reconnaissance contributed decisively to the Finnish success. The Finns learned of the planned major offensive at noon on July 2, 1944, when the Soviet troops switched to unencrypted radio and announced their intention to invade Finland once and for all. The opening of the Finnish counter-attack came as a total surprise to the Red Army. In the early morning of July 3, 1944, around 80 Finnish and German bombers smashed the uncovered Soviet attack point exactly 2 minutes before 0400 h, whereupon the Soviet troops were no longer able to reorganize. In addition, the Finnish infantry had been equipped with the new anti-tank weapons of the type Panzerfaust and Panzerschreck , which they knew how to use with devastating success. The approximately 250 Finnish guns fired with the support of a new aiming system developed by the artillery chief Vilho Petter Nenonen , which enabled new targets to be captured quickly. Although the Russians succeeded in capturing the village of Tali and penetrating to Ihantala during July 4th, the attack subsided on the evening of July 5th near the Ihantala cemetery. The fighting continued for two more days, but finally the Soviet Union withdrew its troops, as it urgently needed them to drive the Germans back near Leningrad and the Narva. Finland was saved and Oesch received the Mannerheim Cross during the battle . Tali-Ihantala was a defensive victory in a lost war. Faced with the German defeats, the Finns accepted the harsh Soviet armistice terms that same year.
Doubtful conviction as a war criminal
After Karl Lennart Oesch had served as Chief of Staff for another year, he took his leave in September 1945. The Soviet Union now demanded that he be arrested as a war criminal. Oesch turned himself in to the police, and he was convicted along with other key Finnish people, including former President Risto Ryti . Stalin instructed that Marshal Mannerheim should not be charged, while Oesch was held responsible for the deaths of 17 captured Soviet soldiers. During the Continuation War, he had signed regulations on dealing with prisoners of war, which allowed the use of weapons in the event of disobedience by prisoners. The sentence was twelve years in prison, but Oesch was released after three years. The judgment is judged by experts as highly dubious and contradicts the moderate personality of Oesch, but it was vital for the Finns to comply with the pressure of the Soviet Union and provide a scapegoat.
Oesch's late years
Oesch is said to have been so respected after his victory at Tali-Ihantala that he would have been appointed as his successor if Mannerheim failed. Precisely for this reason, the 77-year-old field marshal shied away from competition from Oesch, who was 26 years his junior, and refused his promotion to general . Mannerheim wanted to keep his nimbus untouched, and this is probably the blind spot in the personality of this otherwise undisputed general and statesman. Oesch had fallen out of favor with him, although Oesch's arbitrariness, which had compensated for certain wrong decisions by Mannerheim, must have played a role. Marshal Mannerheim became President. Then came Juho Kusti Paasikivi . After him, Urho Kekkonen was elected President of Finland in February 1956 and re-elected in 1962 and 1968. Kekkonen presented the creation of Finland as a gesture of magnanimity by the Soviet state and thus became the originator of the term " Finlandization ". As Minister of Justice, he had already requested Oesch's arrest, and in the end he did not invite him to Independence Day; And even when he died in 1978, Oesch, unlike Risto Ryti, did not receive any state honor. He was particularly troubled by the fact that he had not been promoted to general.
A scientific conference on the person and fate of Karl Lennart Oesch took place in Helsinki at the beginning of November 2008. This occasion means a belated honor for him, whom many contemporary witnesses see as Finland's true savior in the 1944 defensive war against the Soviet Union. In 2014, his parents' home community honored him with a memorial stone.
In the last phase of his life, Oesch devoted himself to war history. He wrote a book about the decisive battle on the Kannas, the Finnish Halbenge, and he visited Switzerland several times, where his memory is still cherished today, as he was clear in this regard: “I was born in Finland, from my origin but I'm definitely Swiss. "
literature
- Vesa Määttä: KL Oesch - Swiss, pacifist, Finnish general . Werd Verlag 2016, ISBN 978-3-85932-816-7 .
- Peter Blauner: Cold War for Lieutenant General Oesch - Or Zeitgeist 1950 ; Aarberg BE, self-published, December 2010.
- Peter Blauner: A Soldier's Fate: Karl Lennart Oesch ; General Swiss military magazine 3/2011.
- Fritz Lehmann: Lieutenant General Karl Lennart Oesch - a Swiss cheese-maker as a Finnish military leader . The Swiss soldier 1/1995.
- Fritz Lehmann: The Finnish Swiss general KL Oesch . General Swiss military magazine 8/2010.
- Ulrich Meyer: Finnish general of Swiss descent ; The Swiss soldier, 81st year old, March 2006.
- Ulrich Meyer: Finnish general of Swiss descent ; FINLAND Magazine, No. 82, December 2009.
- Karl Lennart Oesch: Finland's decisive battle in 1944 and its political, economic and military consequences . 1964 Frauenfeld, Switzerland. Publishing house Huber & Cie. AG.
- Willy Schenk: Karl Lennart Oesch was honored late in Finland - "Swiss" general as hero and ostracized in World War II . Neue Zürcher Zeitung, December 5, 2008, No. 285, page 9.
Web links
Publications by and about Karl Lennart Oesch in the Helveticat catalog of the Swiss National Library
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- ↑ Der Bund, Bern honors Finland's forgotten war heroes , August 10, 2014, accessed on August 10, 2014
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Oesch, Karl Lennart |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Finnish general in World War II |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 8, 1892 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Pyhäjärvi Vpl |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 28, 1978 |
| Place of death | Helsinki |