(I am sure I posted a review of this book back when I read it in 2022 - but I can't find it so I have written a new one - my apologies to anyone who r(I am sure I posted a review of this book back when I read it in 2022 - but I can't find it so I have written a new one - my apologies to anyone who read my previous review - September 2023)
In the years between WWI and WWII Europe was awash with potential 'saviours'. Men with a taste for uniforms, grandiose titles and spouting messianic clap-trap were to be seen everywhere. They might be ridiculous like 'King' Zog of Albania and 'admiral' Horthy the 'regent' of the landlocked kingdom' of Hungary; 'fathers' of their country like Jozef Pilsudski or creatures of nightmare out of the id like Stalin and Hitler but none of them after 'saving' their countries was ever to act like Cincinnatus or George Washington and declare their job done and hand over power and return to civilian life. But in the midst of this shower of self-serving mediocrities who almost all led their countries down paths of defeat and shame one man did just that, fought to preserve the freedom of his country, twice, and stepped down so ordinary men and women could decide to create a country were men like him would have o role, that man was Baron Gustav von Mannerheim.
I have always found Mannerheim a fascinating character, a scion of the Baltic German/Swedish nobility, as an officer in the chevalier guards regiment you can see him on grainy ancient newsreel film on the left hand of Emperor Nicholas II escorting him at his coronation it was, he always said, the greatest moment in his life. He was the only successful 'White' general in the Russian Civil War and played a pivotal role in Finland's complex wars against, and relations with, the Soviet Union. Mannerheim's qualities can best be seen in contrast to the other scion of Baltic German/Swedish nobility that rose to notoriety in the Russian Civil War the bloody/mad Baron von Ungern-Sternberg. While Mannerheim helped forge an independent, democratic and socialist leaning Finland Ungern-Sternberg tried to reestablish the Mongol empire and launched a quixotic invasion of Bolshevik Russia to restore 'emperor' Michael II*.
So what of this book? It is a fascinating account of Mannerheim and his career although concentrating, and providing new information in English about Mannerheim's explorations in China, meetings with the 13th Dali Lama and various spying activities, such as on the Japanese navy, during 1906-1909. It is well written, has excellent maps and photographs. What it lacks, is what Mannerheim ultimately lacks, any real colour or character that can make you seize on and love the man. It is easy to admire him, respect him, but love him? Most of everything I have said about him is praising what he was not. What he was, honourable, decent, a man of principle one of the last great paladins of nobility a worthy claimant to Cincinnatus's laurels but how many reading this review knew who Cincinnatus was? If this excellent account lacks zing it is because Mannerheim himself lacks zing - even amongst young Finnish people Mannerheim is almost completely unknown - for a brief moment interest rose when Uralin Perhonen (Butterfly of the Urals 2008) a short, beautifully made puppet animation by Katariina Lillqvist suggested he returned from Asia with a Kirghiz catamite. Of course he didn't but I think the interest it aroused shows not so much a lack of respect as a desire to find a human aspect to the national hero.
I think Mannerheim as a man, his life and times and the history of Finland and Russia are well worth reading about, maybe more so now than when this book was published in 2009. Then it seemed the days of Russian aggression towards former Soviet and Imperial territories was a thing of the past not so today and, though I doubt they will broadcast it, I have no doubt that old border defences are being strengthened and new ones built.
*'Emperor' Michael had been dead for three years, shot days before his brother and family in Yekaterinburg and other relations in Apaleysk in 1918. Michael never wanted to be emperor and would have hated the idea of bloodshed to put him on the throne....more
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