Title: Meine Sendung in Finnland und im Baltikum
First published: 1920
Description: This is the 1920 war memoir of German Army General Rüdiger von der Goltz (1865-1946). In 1918 he was sent from the Western front of World War I to intervene in the Finnish civil war, aiding the nationalist White Guards against the Reds. With a division under his command, he helped the Whites secure a quick and complete victory in Finland. This was the high-water mark of German success in World War I. 

After Germany collapsed into revolution and sued for peace in November, Bolshevik forces surged westward from Russia into the newly independent Baltic States and Poland, and the victorious Entente powers, fearing the spread of communism, allowed some German occupation forces to remain in the East. 

In February 1919 von der Goltz landed in western Latvia into what he called a "witches' cauldron" of contending forces. Heading a corps of local Baltic Germans and nationalist Freikorps volunteer units from Germany, he won substantial victories against Red forces; however, he then expanded his defensive mission and strove to carve out a German sphere of influence in the Baltic, in hopes of capturing Petersburg and replacing the Bolshevik regime with a pro-German White Russian government. In this he was thwarted. 

After his forces were driven from the Baltic in late 1919, von der Goltz, deeply embittered, sided with right-wing forces hoping to overthrow the democratic Weimar German government; later he became a supporter of Hitler and the National Socialist regime. His bitterness and skepticism about democracy are given full expression in this book.

Von der Goltz's memoir is mainly important as a historical document for our understanding of 20th-Century Central and Eastern European history. However, it is also a fascinating story in its own right.

As of September 2013 an English translation is available as an e-book under the title "My Mission in Finland and the Baltic".
Subjects: Germany, France, World War I, Finland, Baltic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russian Civil War, Freikorps, Weimar, military history, World War, 1914-1918, German Personal narratives, History
Places: Germany, France, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania
People: Rüdiger von der Goltz
Time periods: 1914-1919