Antti Isotalo (Jäger)

Antti Isotalo (13 January 1895 – 17 March 1964) was a Finnish Jäger lieutenant, military recruiter, farmer and activist. He served in the German Empire's battalion of Finnish volunteers on the Eastern Front of World War I and briefly in the Finnish Civil War (1918) on the Whites' side. He repeatedly evaded capture by authorities while recruiting men for the battalion in 1915 and 1916. After recovering from wounds sustained in the civil war, he recruited volunteers for the Estonian War of Independence and then joined the Aunus expedition as one of its commanders during Finland's "tribal wars" in 1919.

Later, after spending three years as a migrant worker in Australia in the mid-to-late 1920s, he returned to Finland and was an active member of the far-right Lapua Movement and its successor, the Patriotic People's Movement. He was involved in the failed Mäntsälä rebellion (1932), ran for parliament and spent most of the Winter War as a commandant on the homefront. He then served in Karelia during the Continuation War, where his presence inspired the younger enlisted men. Lastly, he was the local leader of Alko (the Finnish alcohol monopoly) in Seinäjoki from 1945 until 1958. After withdrawing from partisan politics, he described himself as a political "nihilist" and "nonpartisan anti-communist." His reputation was described in "Kuularuiskulaulu", a song first recorded in the 1930s which remained popular during the Continuation War.