Hans Kalm (21 April 1889-1 February 1981) was a Colonel in the armies of Finland and Estonia during the Finnish Civil War, Estonian War of Independence, and World War II.
Biography[]
Hans Kalm was born in Viljandi, Estonia Governorate, Russian Empire in 1889, and he joined the Imperial Russian Army in 1914 when World War I broke out. After the 1917 Russian Revolution, he fled to Finland, where he commanded a battalion of park ranger students loyal to White Finland during the Finnish Civil War. He executed over 500 Red prisoners (including 200 female fighters) at the Hennala camp, raping many of the female fighters; Kalm himself executed Red leader Ali Aaltonen. He left the White Army in July 1918 and joined the Estonian military, commanding a unit of Finnish volunteers during the Estonian War of Independence. From 1923 to 1933, he worked as a doctor in the US states of New Jersey and New York, becoming a US citizen in 1930. Kalm would later return to Finland, where he commanded a POW camp during the Winter War. During the war, he was involved with a Finnish national socialist organization, and he fled to the USA via Sweden to avoid persecution at the hands of the Finnish government. He worked as a cardiac specialist in Aiken County, South Carolina and in Mexico, and he returned to Finland in 1957 to practice homeopathic medicine. He died in Jyvaskyla, Finland in 1981.