Radola Gajda, born as Rudolf Geidl (14 February 1892 – 15 April 1948) was a Czech military commander and politician.
Early years
Geidl's father was an officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army based in Kotor. His mother was a poor Montenegrin noblewoman. Later, the family moved to Kyjov, Moravia, where Geidl studied at a secondary grammar school. In 1910 he went through one year of compulsory military service in Mostar. Afterwards Geidl left for the Balkans and likely took part in the Balkan Wars (1912–13). At the start of World War I he re-joined the Austro-Hungarian Army and served in Dalmatia and Sarajevo. In September 1915 he was taken prisoner in Višegrad, Bosnia.
Legions
Immediately after his capture, Geidl switched sides and was commissioned as a captain in the Montenegrin Army. Having some experience as an apothecary, he pretended to be a physician. Following the collapse of the Montenegrin Army in 1916, Gajda escaped into Russia where he joined a Serbian battalion as a physician.
At the end of 1916 the battalion was destroyed and Gajda joined the Czechoslovak Legions (30 January 1917) as a staff captain. Gajda proved himself as an able commander in the Battle of Zborov and quickly rose through the military hierarchy.
During the evacuation of the Legion in May 1918 via the Trans-Siberian Railway violence erupted between the Legion and the Bolsheviks. Czechoslovak soldiers quickly occupied large tracts of the railway east of the Volga. Gajda commanded the area from Novonikolayevsk (Novosibirsk) north to Irkutsk. Aggressive tactics, sometimes against the orders of his superiors, helped to defeat the Bolshevik forces and connect all units of the Legion. This contributed to his conflict with Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, who wanted the Legions to stay neutral in the Russian Civil War.
After the capture of Yekaterinburg by the Legion and the White Army in July 1918, he set up his headquarters in the city, establishing his office at the Ipatiev House, incidentally where the imprisoned Romanovs had been murdered by the Bolsheviks less than a week prior to the capture of the city. The most successful operation was the capture of Perm (24 December 1918) where the Legion took 20,000 prisoners and seized 5,000 railway cars, 60 cannon, 1,000 machine guns and the fleet frozen in the Kama River. Gajda enjoyed widespread popularity amongst his troops and throughout the White movement. He was promoted to Major-General and nicknamed "the Siberian Ataman" and "the Siberian Tiger." He later accepted an invitation from Aleksandr Kolchak to become a commander in his army.
His career with Kolchak was less successful—the Red Army had begun to take the initiative while Kolchak's forces dwindled away. Gajda, out of Kolchak's favor, was dismissed on 5 July 1919. After involving himself in the unsuccessful mutiny of Esers against Kolchak (17 November 1919) he escaped from Siberia and sailed to Europe.
Military career in Czechoslovakia
After arriving in Czechoslovakia in early 1920, Gajda was given a pension and the rank of General, but was not assigned a command. In November 1920 he was sent to study military theory at the École supérieure de guerre in France. He also studied agriculture at the Institut Technique de Pratique Agricole.
Gajda returned two years later. On 9 October 1922, he was given command of the 11th Division in Košice, Slovakia. His involvement in the cultural life of the region soon endeared him to the locals. On 1 December 1924 he was named Deputy Chief of the General Staff in Prague under General Eugène Mittelhauser, head of French military mission in Czechoslovakia.[http://www.army.cz/scripts/detail.php?id=3849] Gajda became a rival of Mittelhauser and Mittelhauser's predecessor Maurice Pellé.