The Air Force in Finland, which has now become part of NATO, is still the swastfit on a handful of unity flags – but it is preparing to store it, to a large extent to avoid embarrassment with its Western allies.
The history of the Finnish Air Force’s use of anxiety, which since the twentieth century was largely linked to the group of tyranny and Nazi hatred, is more complicated than the first appearance. It is an old symbol and the Air Force in Finland began to use it many years before the birth of Nazi Germany.
The change was underway for years. The swast cross logo was quietly pulled from Air Command Unit logo A few years ago. However, the box over the flags of the Finnish Air Force remained, as the eyebrows between NATO allies, tourists and other foreigners who discover them on military occasions.
“We could continue in this flag, but sometimes embarrassing situations with foreign visitors could be created. It may be wise to live with the Times, and Colonel Tommy Boham, the new head of the Air Defense Force Carlia, was quoted as saying in a report on Thursday by the public broadcaster Yale.
A bad look at a new NATO member
The defense forces said, in an e -mail to Associated Press on Friday, that a plan to renew the flags of the Air Force Unit was launched in 2023, the year that Finland joined, but was not linked to joining the coalition. He said that the goal is to “update the symbolism and flags of the flags to better reflect the current identity of the Air Force.”
She referred to an article in Daily Helsinagan Santum on Friday, which said the reason for the removal was a perception that the swastback was “an embarrassing symbol in international contexts.”
Finland, which shares long with Russia, Join NATO in April 2023 Regarding concerns about Russia’s extensive invasion of Ukraine.
Televo Tivanin, a professor of global policy at the University of Helsinki, said that the flags concerned have been presented in the fifties and today are transferred by four air units.
Tifanin said, this month that the Air Force and the Finnish public insisted in general that the swastbed used in the Air Force in Finland “has nothing to do with the Nazi intercession,” said Thievanin, who published a book this month translating the title of the Finnish title as “History of the Slack Cross.”
But now, after Finland’s integration with NATO, politicians have decided, “There is now a need to obtain more integration with the forces of countries such as Germany, the Netherlands and France – the countries where the swasty cross is a clear negative symbol.”
Teifanin said that in 2021, the German Air Force units bend from a final ceremony after exercises at a military base in the Lapland area of Finland after learning that the Finnish intercession would be shown.
Code used for more than a century
The Air Force in Finland adopted the slogan of the sterile cross in 1918 shortly after the country gained independence after more than a century of Russian imperial rule.
Count Erik von Rosen, from the neighboring Sweden, donated the first military plane in Finland in 1918, which carries its personal symbol, the swastika.
Shortly after the Finnish Air Force adopted shortly after the Blue Basting Cross, on a white background, as the national badge on all its planes from 1918 to 1945. After the war, the pictures for decades remained on some flags of the Air Force and Decorative Unit, as well as in the emblem of the Air Force Academy.
But this does not mean that there is no Nazi contact at all.
Von Rosen, an aristocratic explorer and ethnography, was Hermann Guering, a German fighter pilot decorated in World War I, who became an early member of the Nazi Party. Goering continued the leadership of Germany Luftwaffe during World War II under Hitler.
The Finnish Air Force confirmed that its use of the symbol was not related to Nazi Germany, although Finland entered a hesitant alliance with the third Reich during World War II.
The Defense Forces said that the new flags – which are characterized by Benser – will be published when the work is completed and the flags are used in use for events such as marches and local celebrations.
The statement said by email: “The traditional traditional von Rosen logo, used since 1918, has been removed from most other air force slogans during previous reforms, and therefore removing them from unit flags is a logical continuation of this work.”