- published: 06 Mar 2012
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Baron Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim (Swedish pronunciation: [ˈkɑːrl ˈɡɵsˌtɑf ˈeːmil ˈmanːərˌheim]) (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. He was Regent of Finland (1918–1919) and the sixth President of Finland (1944–1946).
Mannerheim was born in the autonomous Grand Principality of Finland, which was part of the Russian Empire, into a family of Swedish-speaking aristocrats who had settled in Finland in the late 18th century. His paternal German ancestor Marhein had emigrated to Sweden during the 17th century. His maternal ancestry has its roots in Södermanland, Sweden.
He made a career in the Imperial Russian Army, rising to the rank of lieutenant general. He also had a prominent place in the ceremonies for Tsar Nicholas II's coronation and later had several private meetings with the Russian Tsar. After the Bolshevik revolution, Finland declared its independence but was soon embroiled in a civil war along class lines. The working class overwhelmingly held a socialist ("Red") creed; whereas the aristocracy, landowners, and the middle-class held a capitalist ("White") creed. 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 was appointed commander-in-chief of the country's armed forces.
Adolf Hitler (German: [ˈadɔlf ˈhɪtlɐ] ( listen); 20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP), commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945 and dictator of Nazi Germany (as Führer und Reichskanzler) from 1934 to 1945. Hitler is commonly associated with the rise of fascism in Europe, World War II, and the Holocaust.
A decorated veteran of World War I, Hitler joined the German Workers' Party, precursor of the Nazi Party, in 1919, and became leader of the NSDAP in 1921. In 1923, he attempted a coup d'état, known as the Beer Hall Putsch, in Munich. The failed coup resulted in Hitler's imprisonment, during which time he wrote his memoir, Mein Kampf (My Struggle). After his release in 1924, Hitler gained popular support by attacking the Treaty of Versailles and promoting Pan-Germanism, antisemitism, and anticommunism with charismatic oratory and Nazi propaganda. After his appointment as chancellor in 1933, he transformed the Weimar Republic into the Third Reich, a single-party dictatorship based on the totalitarian and autocratic ideology of Nazism. His aim was to establish a New Order of absolute Nazi German hegemony in continental Europe.