World War II Database

Contributor: C. Peter Chen

ww2dbaseAxel Erik Heinrichs was a German-trained Jaeger soldier with the Royal Prussian 27th Jäger Battalion between 1915 and 1918. During the Finnish Civil War, he fought on the side of the White Guard and participated in the battles at Tampere and Viipuri. When Russia invaded Finland and started the Winter War, he was assigned the Finnish III Army Corps. On 19 Feb 1940, he was assigned as the commanding officer of the Army of Karelian Isthmus. In Jun 1940, he was made the Chief of the General Staff. In 1941, he was promoted to the rank of general. When the Continuation War began in Jun 1941, he returned to the Army of Karelian Isthmus as its commanding officer, holding that position until Jan 1942, after which he was again appointed the Chief of the General Staff. In 1944, he was awarded the Mannerheim Cross, First Class; he was the second person to receive the award. After the war, he was implicated in the Weapons Cache Case, in which small arms were hidden in a great number of caches around Finland in case of the need for a guerilla war against the potential post-war Soviet occupation. He resigned from his post as the Army's commander-in-chief due to the incident, but remained influential in military circles.

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