Suinula Massacre in Finnish Civil War

Date: January 31, 1918 • Location: Kangasala, Finland

Finnish Civil War: The Suinula massacre, which changes the nature of the war in a more hostile direction, takes place in Kangasala.

The Finnish Civil War was fought in 1918 for the leadership and control of recently independent Finland between White Finland and the Finnish Socialist Workers' Republic. The clashes took place in the context of the national, political, and social turmoil caused by World War I in Europe. The belligerents were the paramilitary Red Guards, led by a section of the Social Democratic Party with backup of the Russian bolsheviks, and the paramilitary White Guards of the senate. General C. G. E. Mannerheim led the White Guards with major assistance by both the Finnish Jäger Battalion trained in Germany and from March-April 1918 by the German Imperial Army, along the German goal to control Fennoscandia and Petrograd of Russia. The Reds, composed of industrial and agrarian working class people, controlled the cities and industrial centres of southern Finland. The Whites, composed of land owners and the middle and upper class, controlled the rural central and northern Finland.