Battle of Tampere
탐페레 전투
The best-known and deadliest battle of the Finnish Civil War. The Whites under Mannerheim opened their offensive in mid-March 1918, encircled Tampere, the centre of the labour movement, from 23 March and took it after street fighting on 6 April. The White victory became the turning point of the war, followed by executions of surrendering Reds and the internment of more than 10,000 prisoners.
In depth
With about 60,000 people including suburbs, Tampere was Finland’s third-largest and most industrialised town and was regarded as the capital of the labour movement. Although the Red government sat in Helsinki, the railways and large working-class population made Tampere the main base of the Red Guards, whose Tampere guard numbered about 6,000, including 300 women. According to the English-language source the Whites began their operation on 15 March (the Finnish-language source says 16 March) and broke the Red front at Länkipohja and Orivesi. Some 15,000 Reds fell back on Tampere and resolved to defend it, and on 23 March 17,000 Whites besieged the town. Eino Rahja counterattacked with 3,500 men at Lempäälä to the south. In the “Bloody Thursday” assault of 28 March the conscript battalions led by Jäger officers and the Swedish Brigade suffered heavy losses, while the Red commander Hugo Salmela was killed in an accident and replaced by Verner Lehtimäki. Five days of shelling then all but destroyed the working-class districts of Tammela and Kyttälä.
The decisive White offensive of 3 April took the eastern working-class districts house by house and crossed the Tammerkoski on the 4th. On the 5th the City Hall fell as the last Red pocket, and that evening Lehtimäki, Ali Aaltonen and other Reds escaped across the frozen lakes. On the morning of 6 April a white flag went up on the Pyynikki Tower. The English-language source estimates 600–820 Whites and 600–1,000 Reds killed, and records that about 1,000 Reds and 200 Russians were executed after the battle. The Finnish-language source puts the Red dead at about 2,000, half of them executed prisoners, and the White dead at about 700. More than 10,000 prisoners stood in the Central Square for nearly a day before being moved to the Kalevankangas camp, where 1,228 died of executions, disease or hunger within five months. The Finnish-language source calls it, by the numbers engaged, the largest battle in Nordic military history up to that time.