All events · The World Wars

The Finnish Civil War Prison Camps

1918–1919 · Europe & Northern Eurasia

Confinement

Confined

80,000

About 80,000 Reds were captured at the end of the war in May 1918 and held initially across some sixty-four camps, consolidated to thirteen by the summer; the largest were at Tammisaari, Suomenlinna, Hameenlinna, Riihimaki, Lahti and Tampere. The figures come from Finnish state prison-camp administration records and the special court files, compiled in the national accounting of the war's victims.

Share of the population affected

2.6%

of the population of Finland at the time of the civil war, 1918

Killed

11,600–13,500

deaths in transit or in camps

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What happened

The Finnish Civil War of January to May 1918 ended with the defeat of the Red Guards, and roughly 80,000 prisoners were taken into camps while special treason courts processed their cases. Food was scarce in Finland that spring, rations in the camps were inadequate, and malnutrition combined with a summer epidemic to produce very high mortality: about 11,600 prisoners died in the camps, most of them between May and September 1918. The special courts issued 555 death sentences of which 113 were carried out, on top of several thousand summary executions during and immediately after the fighting, including roughly 290 in Tampere and 247 in Vyborg. Total deaths from the war and its aftermath came to about 36,000 in a country of some three million. Most prisoners were released under amnesties during 1918-19, but the camps and the terror left a division in Finnish society that lasted for decades; a state-funded national project later compiled a database of all those who died in the conflicts of 1914-22.

Parties

The victorious Finnish White government interned captured Red Guards, their families and suspected supporters in prison camps and tried them before special treason courts

Disputed

Whether the camp deaths should be attributed to a deliberate policy of punishment or to Finland's acute food crisis and administrative collapse in 1918 is debated by Finnish historians; the totals themselves are among the best documented of any event in this period.

The denominator

Finnish official statistics put the population at about 3.13 million in 1918. The camps held some 80,000 people, close to the entire Red Guard establishment of roughly 75,000-100,000 combatants and supporters; about 12,500 died in the camps of hunger and disease within a year, the highest camp mortality in interwar Europe relative to population.

Where the baseline comes from

Finnish Civil Waropen-edited
Demographics of Finlandopen-edited

On the death toll

About 11,600 prisoners died in the camps, chiefly of malnutrition and of the disease that swept them in the summer of 1918; adding the 113 executions ordered by the treason courts and deaths shortly after release brings the camp-related toll to roughly 12,500-13,500. These figures come from Finnish state records compiled in the national war-victims project, and are relatively well established. Around 36,000 people died in the war and its aftermath in total.

Documented forms of violence

Arbitrary DetentionStarvation and SiegeSummary Execution

Mass internment, camp starvation and the summary executions of 1918 are documented in Finnish state prison-camp and treason-court records and in the national compilation of war victims.

Movements mapped

Captured Red Guards from Tampere and southern Finland -> Tammisaari and other camps

Countries touched, on present-day borders

Finland

Sources

This entry rests only on reference, press or open-edited sources. Treat its figures as indicative and follow the links before relying on them.