Finland’s air force is quietly dropping the swastika

Friday, July 10th, 2020

Finland’s air force has been using a swastika ever since it was founded in 1918, shortly after the country became an independent nation and before the Nazis adopted the ancient symbol and rose to power:

Until 1945 its planes bore a blue swastika on a white background — and this was not intended to show allegiance to Nazi Germany, though the two nations were aligned.

While the symbol was left off planes after World War Two, a swastika still featured in some Air Force unit emblems, unit flags and decorations — including on uniforms, a spokesperson for the Finnish air force told the BBC.

Finnish Air Force Swastika

The Romantic painter went on to use a swastika as part of his designs for the insignia of the Order of the Cross of Liberty. He used a cross with much smaller hooks, so the visual similarity to Nazi symbolism is much less pronounced. It also features on the official flag of the Finnish president.

Finnish Flag with Swastika

But the swastika became associated with the Finnish air force via a very different man – a Swedish nobleman called Count Eric von Rosen.

The count used the swastika as a personal good luck charm. When he gifted a plane to the nascent air force of Sweden’s newly independent neighbour in 1918 he had had a blue swastika painted on it. This Thulin Typ D was the first aircraft of the Finnish air force and subsequent planes all had his blue swastika symbol too, until 1945.

Supporters of a continued use of the symbol point out that there were no Nazis in 1918 so the air force’s use of the swastika has nothing to do with Nazism.

However, while Eric von Rosen had no Nazi associations at the time of his 1918 gift, he did subsequently become a leading figure in Sweden’s own national socialist movement in the 1930s. He was also a brother-in-law of senior German Nazi Herman Göring, and, according to Prof Teivainen, a personal friend of Hitler.

Comments

  1. Bob Sykes says:

    I am surprised it took this long, but the swastika was widely used by Western military and goverment agencies in the first half of the 20th Century. It was used by both the US 45th ID in WW I, and by the Lafayette Escadrille. It is an ancient Indo-European symbol going back many thousands of years. It is still common in South Asia.

    It would still be used if the Nazis had not permanently poisoned it.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_use_of_the_swastika_in_the_early_20th_century

  2. Kirk says:

    Putting as much weight on any of these symbols as we do is a marker of infantile behavior and obsession with the trivial that borders on neurotic.

    Every time I see someone doing that crap, whether it is on “my” side or the “other side”, the individual doing it is usually a borderline cretin. Burn my flag? WTF? Are you some kind of primitive, that thinks black magic works? I’m indifferent to the symbology of the event, but I strongly support culling these creatures from the population due to the near-inevitable progression from burning flags and other symbols to burning books, and then ending with people. It’s a behavioral marker, just like with serial killers killing and torturing small animals; catch a kid doing that, and save yourself some grief by putting them down when you find them.

  3. Eli says:

    “It would still be used if the Nazis had not permanently poisoned it.”

    How arrogant must a people or generation of people be, that an ancient symbol becomes “permanently poisoned” within a generation. As though they were the first generation to walk upright, and their words and deeds to last an eternity.

  4. Harry Jones says:

    I wonder if the Buddhists will yield to this pressure. On the one hand, they hate extremism. On the other hand, they hate making a fuss.

  5. Phil B says:

    I have a copy of Rudyard Kiplings complete poems published in the 1930′s and was originally owned by a Captain in the Royal Artillery. It has a swastika in gold on the spine and embossed into the bottom right hand corner of the front cover.

    Odd that, eh?

  6. Bob Syskes says:

    Dear Eli,

    I’m sorry to have offended you, but I think the sins of the Nazis were so great, and their embrace of the swastika was so complete, that Westerners cannot tolerate it. For us, it is worse than the Confederate battle flag. Hindus did not experience the Nazi corruption of the symbol, and do not respond the same way Europeans and Americans do. For us it can never be an acceptable symbol.

  7. RLVC says:

    Bob: “It would still be used if the Nazis had not permanently poisoned it.”

    Yes, indeed, the Germans committed the ultimate sin:

    They lost.

  8. Sam J. says:

    Bob Syskes says,”…I’m sorry to have offended you, but I think the sins of the Nazis were so great, and their embrace of the swastika was so complete, that Westerners cannot tolerate it…”

    This is purely a Jewish perspective and they don’t speak for all westerners. They’d like to and do have an inordinate mass of mouthpieces but the statement is not true.

    The thing the Germans are guilty of is not letting the Jews continue to destroy them and ravage their country…and attacking Poland (big mistake attacking Poland). As for attacking the USSR the evidence has shifted to the fact that the USSR would have attacked Germany if they had not attacked them first.

    As for the Holohoax the only evidence for the Germans piling 6 million Jews in train cars, gassing them and burning them up in ovens is a massive hoard of Jew made for TV movies.

  9. Lucklucky says:

    Nazis murdered millions of white people. Somehow their supporters are so shallow that do not even reach that level of understanding. In most cases in fact they don’t care at all.

    The virtue of Witch burning is necessary for some egos and is all is that matters.

    Nazis are at Communist level: we are the good ones so we can kill millions even of our own. Like Islamists do.

  10. Sam J. says:

    “…Somehow their supporters are so shallow that do not even reach that level of understanding…”

    I wonder if this is for me. Nice try but saying I’m supporter of Nazis is a straw man you propped up.

    Seeing the squeeze they were put in and the parasite Jews picking their bones clean. Recognizing that to get rid of them was necessary hardly makes me a Uber German Supreme being as I’m not Germans in the first place. They were forced by the Jews to fight or be eaten and subjected by the Jews.

    It’s not hard to notice that the Jews took over Russia and massacred millions of Whites then tried to take over Germany and failed. So then in response to the Jews the Germans defend themselves and WHOOPS they, not the Jews, are responsible.

    The Germans knew damn well what kind of massive slaughter was going on in the USSR. It was common knowledge and they were next. Without the Jews the whole thing would have never happened. They were the prime mover. The ones that started it.

    There is very little good present scholarship that can contend that the USSR was not going to attack Germany. All of the USSR’s military output was strongly focused on offensive weapons and offensive training. Most all defensive systems were completely ignored. This is the reason the Germans were so successful in the beginning. The Jews were all in on offense.

    Hitler tried mightily over and over to get the British to not declare war on him. It’s hardly the Germans fault the Jews controlled the allies and when they attacked the Germans a bunch of Whites got killed.

  11. RLVC says:

    >the Germans
    >The Germans
    >the Germans
    >the Germans
    >the Germans

    mah niggah

    https://i.postimg.cc/rpZhRs4t/45-CB5-F7-B-E05-F-45-E1-8-B6-D-A57-FD2603-A19.jpg

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