On 15 January, Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim, like Aaltonen a former officer in the Russian army, was appointed supreme commander of the White Guards, and on 25 January the Senate renamed the White Guards the Finnish White Army.

As a former Russian army officer, Mannerheim was well aware of the demoralization of the Russian army.

On 30 January 1918 General Mannerheim proclaimed to Russian soldiers in Finland that the White army did not fight against Russia: the goal of the White campaign was to beat the Finnish Red rebels and the Russian troops supporting them.

Despite Finnish resistance, a peace treaty was signed in March 1940, wherein Finland ceded some key territory to the Soviet Union, including the Karelian Isthmus, containing Finland's second-largest city, Viipuri, and the critical defensive structure of the Mannerheim Line.

It was created by a private non-profit enterprise called Asuntosäätiö ( the Housing Foundation ), which was established in 1951 by six social trade organisations including the Confederation of Finnish Trade Unions, the Central Organisation of Tenants, the Mannerheim Child Welfare Federation, the Finnish Federation of Civilian and Military Invalids and the Civil Servants ' Federation.

The task was given to Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim, at the time a colonel in the Russian army, who travelled to China with French sinologist Paul Pelliot.

Mannerheim was disguised as an ethnographic collector, using a Finnish passport.

However, while Mannerheim was in China in 1907, Russia and Britain brokered the Anglo-Russian Agreement, ending the classical period of the Great Game.

In 1919 he was appointed aide-de-camp to Mannerheim.

In the beginning of the Winter War, Mannerheim appointed Airo as Quartermaster-General, and he was promoted to major general, and two years later to lieutenant general.

Baron Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim () ( 4 June 1867 – 27 January 1951 ) was the military leader of the Whites in the Finnish Civil War, Commander-in-Chief of Finland's Defence Forces during World War II, Marshal of Finland, and a Finnish statesman.

Mannerheim was born in the Grand Principality of Finland, Russian Empire ( name in Russian: Густав Карлович Ма ́ ннергейм ), into a family of Swedish-speaking aristocrats who had settled in Finland in the late 18th century.

Mannerheim was appointed the military chief of the Whites.

Twenty years later, when Finland was at war with the Soviet Union during 1939 – 1944, Mannerheim successfully led the defence of Finland as commander-in-chief of the country's armed forces.

In 1944, when prospect of Germany's defeat in World War II became clear, Mannerheim was elected President of Finland and oversaw peace negotiations with the Soviet Union and the Allies.

His son Augustin Marhein changed his surname to Mannerheim and was raised to the nobility by King Charles XI in 1693.

His son, an artillery colonel and mill manager, Johan Augustin Mannerheim, was raised to the status of Baron at the same time as his brother in 1768.

Mannerheim's great-grandfather, Count Carl Erik Mannerheim ( 1759 – 1837 ), had held a number of offices in Finland's civil service during the early years of the autonomous Russian Grand Principality of Finland, including membership in the Senate, and served as the first Prime Minister of Finland ( formally the Vice Chairman of the Economic Department of the Senate-the Senate consisted of Economic Department, later the cabinet, and the Justice Dpt, later the Supreme Court, and the formal chairman of both was the Governor General as the acting head of state ).

Mannerheim's grandfather, Count Carl Gustaf Mannerheim ( 1797 – 1854 ), was a renowned entomologist and served as President of the Viipuri Court of Appeals.

Mannerheim's grandmother Countess Eva Wilhelmina Mannerheim, née Schantz, was one of the leading figures in Finnish high society.

Mannerheim's father, Carl Robert, Count Mannerheim ( 1835 – 1914 ), was a playwright who held liberal and radical political ideas but was a businessman and industrialist whose success varied.

Gustaf Mannerheim was born in the family home, Louhisaari Manor in Askainen.

The Turku region has also brought forth many prominent personalities, including the marshal, Carl Gustaf Mannerheim.

In his youth, Gustaf Mannerheim also had to learn how to budget and economize, due to his family's worsened financial status.

In January 1891, Mannerheim was transferred to Her Majesty's Maria Feodorovna's Chevalier Guard in St Petersburg-a position in which his height ( he stood at 187 cm ( 6 ' 1½ ")) was an advantage, and one which also led to his being given a prominent place in the ceremonies for Tsar Nicholas II's coronation in 1896.

Mannerheim also doubted that the modern party-based politics would produce principled and high-quality leaders in Finland or elsewhere.

If Mannerheim had not also firmly refused to let his troops participate in the Siege of Leningrad, they would have ended up becoming an integral part of the siege.

Svinhufvud's Senate also authorized General Mannerheim to form a new Finnish army on the basis on White Guard, the ( chiefly Rightist ) volunteer militia called the Suojeluskunta, an act simultaneously coinciding with the beginning of the Civil War in Finland.

Mannerheim approved the plan, but demanded that Britain would also have to approve of it before it would proceed.

* June 4, birthday of Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim, Marshal of Finland ; the occasion is also celebrated as the Flag Day of the Finnish Defence Forces

Mannerheim wrote his diary and notes in Swedish ( his mother tongue ) to conceal the fact that his ethnographic and scientific party was also an elaborate intelligence gathering mission for the Russian army.

General Mannerheim agreed on the need for German weapons, but opposed any help from German troops in Finland.

However, on 10 July 1941, Field Marshal Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim issued an Order of the Day that contained a formulation understood internationally as a Finnish territorial interest in Russian Karelia.

After Soviet offensives were fought to a standstill, Ryti's successor as president, Marshall Mannerheim, dismissed the agreement and opened secret negotiations with the Soviets, which resulted in a ceasefire on 4 September and the Moscow Armistice on 19 September 1944.

Kallio together with Mannerheim at the Helsinki railway station on December 19, 1940.

Mannerheim specialised as an expert on horses, buying stud stallions and special duty horses for the army.

On returning from the war, Mannerheim went on an informal vacation among his relatives in Finland and Sweden 1905 – 1906.

From the terminus of the Trans-Caspian Railway in Andijan, the expedition started in July 1906, but Mannerheim spent the greater part of it alone, after quarrelling with Pelliot over several logistic issues on their way to Kashgar in China's Xinjiang province.

Mannerheim eventually arrived in Beijing in July 1908, where he worked on his military intelligence report.

At the beginning of World War I, Mannerheim served as commander of the Guards Cavalry Brigade, and fought on the Austro-Hungarian and Romanian fronts.

The pelt is on display at the Mannerheim Museum in Kaivopuisto, Helsinki.

When negotiations with the Soviet Union failed in 1939, Mannerheim withdrew his resignation on 17 October.

He was elected by Parliament as President of the Republic on July 25, 1919, defeating Carl Gustaf Mannerheim ( the candidate supported by the National Coalition and Swedish People's parties ) by 143 votes to 50 ( see, for example, Sakari Virkkunen, " Finland's Presidents I ," Helsinki, 1994 ).

He was decorated with the Mannerheim Cross, the equivalent of the American Medal of Honor, on 9 July 1944.

* Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim, Field Marshal, Commander-in-Chief-( both on 7 October 1941 )

The Jäger conflict derived from the German-influenced Jägers and politicians who saw Germany as their ally in conflict with the faction oriented towards the Swedish Entente, centering on the former Russian General and Finnish Commander-in-Chief Baron Gustaf Mannerheim.

Soon the Senate asked General Mannerheim to form a new Finnish army on the basis on the White Guard militia.

In February 1940, Finland's Commander-in-Chief marshal Mannerheim expressed his pessimism about the military situation, prompting the government to start peace negotiations on 29 February, the same day the Red Army commenced an attack against Viipuri ( now Vyborg ).

Under Timoshenko's leadership, the Soviets succeeded in breaking through the Finnish Mannerheim Line on the Karelian Isthmus, prompting Finland to sue for peace in March.

The swastika was officially taken into use after an order by Mannerheim on 18 March 1918.