The Order of the Day of the Sword Scabbard, or the Sword Scabbard Declaration, actually refers to two related declarations from Mannerheim, Finland's Commander-in-Chief.
During the Civil War in Finland, in February 1918, general Mannerheim, the commander of the anti-communist White Guards, wrote his famous Order of the Day , in which he declared that "he would not put his sword into the scabbard until East Karelia was free of Russian control." The events at the end of World War I made this goal hard to accomplish, but the Aunus expedition in 1919, during the Russian Civil War, was at least an attempt.
When in the summer of 1941 a well-prepared Finland had been attacked by the Soviet Union, and the war fortune seemed to favour Finland, Mannerheim repeated his declaration in an Order of the Day of July 10, according to which he aimed to expel the Bolsheviks out of Russian Karelia, to liberate the Karelian nations and to accord to Finland a great future. This Order of the Day signified the start of a counter-offensive, that would prove successful and result in a three-year long occupation of Russian Karelia.
Already the declaration of 1918 immediately became a diplomatic burden for the newly independent Finland. But the declaration of 1941 proved to be more detrimental. Although it arouse enthusiasm in the most right-wing circles in Finland, to which quite a few military officers belonged, it also alienated a large portion of the public opinion, of the parliamentarians, and of the international opinion in the countries not yet occupied by Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. It came to cool the relations with Sweden and Britain considerably, practically making the Swedish government's plans for support of Finland in her war with the Soviet Union impossible to put into effect, and in Britain contributing to the development that ultimately would lead to a declaration of war five months later.
For large segments of the public opinion, both in Finland and in akin democratic countries, there was a huge difference between a defensive war and a war of aggression. Finland had in the Winter War had the sympathy of virtually the whole world (with exception for Nazi Germany and the aggressor, the Soviet Union). The chief reason was that Finland in the eyes of the international opinion was unjustly attacked by a much larger power. The Continuation War started more or less similarly, with an unprovoked Soviet air-attack on towns in Finland on June 25, but by the sword scabbard declaration, Mannerheim had lost the possibility to brand the Continuation War as a defensive war, yet even as a war of revenge to re-conquer the homes of an eighth of the Finns that was lost in the Winter War. After the sword scabbard declaration, the Continuation War was officially a war of conquest, to gain land that never in history had belonged to Finland and to "liberate" a population that, as it turned out, didn't want to be liberated — not even from Stalinism.
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Last updated: 08-07-2005 09:25:24
