Aarne Sihvo

Aarne Sihvo (22 November 1889 – 12 June 1963) was a Finnish general and politician.

Biography Sihvo was born in Virolahti to a family of school teachers: Antti Adolf Sihvo and Minna Elisabeth Nyman. He graduated from high school in 1910 and began studying medicine at the University of Helsinki.

In 1915 he moved to Germany where he started his military education as part of the Jäger movement. His time as a Jäger was unusually eventful, including recruitment and espionage trips to Finland and a period as a so-called "cage Jäger" imprisoned in the Spalernaya prison in St Petersburg.

During the Finnish Civil War in 1918 Aarne commanded the front in Karelia between Saimen and Ladoga Lake. His military operations as a part of the Karelian Army concluded to holding a position south of Vuoksen. His youth, his background as a Jäger and his speaking Finnish made him an alternative to Gustaf Mannerheim.

He was the Chief of Defence of the Finnish Defence Forces from 1926 to 1933. In the early 1930s he became the most prominent opponent of right-wing radicalism within the Finnish military leadership. His uncompromising stance toward the Mäntsälä rebellion of 1932 — in which he advocated firm measures against the pro-Lapua Civil Guard members who defied the government — brought him into conflict with the Civil Guard leadership and with Mannerheim, and he was dismissed from his command in early 1933.

Sihvo died aged 73 in Helsinki. He is buried in the Hietaniemi Cemetery in Helsinki.