Swastikas on some Finland air force flags to be phased out

The Air Force of Finland, which is now part of NATO, still steals swastikas on a handful of unitary flags – but is preparing to eliminate them, largely to avoid embarrassment with its Western allies.

The history of the use of the cross swung by the Finnish Air Force, which since the 20th century has been largely associated with Nazi tyranny and hate groups, is more complex than at first glance. It is an old symbol and the Air Force of Finland began to use it for many years before the birth of Nazi Germany.

The change has been underway for years. A Swastika logo was quietly removed from the emblem of the Air Force Command unit a few years ago. But the tied crosses remained on certain Finnish Air Force flags, raised the eyebrows among the allies, tourists and other foreigners of NATO who spot them during military events.

“We could have continued with this flag, but sometimes clumsy situations can occur with foreign visitors. It may be wise to live with Times, Colonel Tomi Böhm, the new chief of Karelia Air Wing Air Force on Thursday, in a report by the public broadcaster Yle.

A bad look for a new NATO member

Friday, the defense forces, in an email at the Associated Press, declared that a plan to renew the flags of the Air Force unit had been launched in 2023, the year when Finland had joined NATO, but said that it was not linked to the membership of the Alliance. The goal, he said, was “to update the symbolism and the emblems of the flags to better reflect the current identity of the Air Force”.

He referred to an article in the Daily Helsing Sanomat on Friday, which said that the reason for the deletion was a perception that the swastika was an “embarrassing symbol in international contexts”.

Finland, which shared a long border with Russia, joined NATO in April 2023 for concerns linked to the large -scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia.

Teivo Teivanen, a world policy professor at the University of Helsinki, said that the flags in question had been introduced in the 1950s and are now piloted by four Air Force units.

The Air Force and the Finnish public generally insisted for years that the swastikas used in the Air Force of Finland “have nothing to do with the Nazi swastika,” said Teivanen, who published this month, who published what the Finnish title is reflected in “History of the Swastika”.

But now, after the integration of Finland with NATO, political decision-makers have decided “it is now necessary to integrate more in the forces of countries like Germany, the Netherlands and France-the countries where the swastika is clearly a negative symbol,” he said.

Teivanen said that in 2021, the German Air Force units withdrew from a last ceremony following exercises in a military base in the Lapland region of Finland after learning that the Finnish swastikas would be exposed.

A symbol used for more than a century

Finland Air Force adopted the swollen cross emblem in 1918 shortly after the country acquired its independence after more than a century of imperial Russian domination.

Count Eric von Rosen of neighboring Sweden donated the first military plane in Finland in 1918, which bore its personal symbol, the swastika.

The Finnish Air Force adopted a blue swine cross on a white background as a national insignant on all its aircraft from 1918 to 1945. After the war, the imagery remained for decades on certain flags and decorations of the Unit of the Air Force as well as on the Insigne of the Air Force Academy.

But that does not mean that there is no Nazi connection at all.

Von Rosen, an aristocratic explorer and ethnographer, was the brother-in-law of Hermann Goering, a German fighter of the first decorated world war who became a member of the early Nazi party. Goering led the German Luftwaffe during the Second World War under Hitler.

The Finnish Air Force stressed that its use of the symbol had no connection with Nazi Germany, although Finland concluded a reluctant alliance with the Third Reich during the Second World War.

New flags – with an eagle – will be published when the work is completed and the flags are introduced for events such as parades and local ceremonies, said defense forces, without saying when it would happen.

“The traditional emblem of Von Rosen Swastika, used since 1918, has already been removed from most of the other emblems of the air force during previous reforms, so that its removal of the unit’s flags is a logical continuation of this work,” said the statement sent by email.