The Suomen ilmavoimat, the Finnish Air Force, recently abandoned a symbol that still used on some coats of arms, flags, medals and uniforms, and that contained a swastika, the hooked cross of ancient origin and still very used in Asian religions, but which by 1930s onwards, at least in the West, is largely associated with Nazism.
Finland’s air force quietly drops swastika symbol https://t.co/Ci86RWVjbL
— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) July 1, 2020
Swastikas, in fact, surprisingly still have a small but significant spread in Finland, where their link with Nazism is less perceived. There is one, graphically different from the Nazi swastika, even in the official flag of the President of the Republic: it is that of the Cross of National Freedom, a symbol designed by the artist Akseli Gallen-Kallela. But it is above all the military air force that still uses swastikas, for reasons that date back to the beginning of the twentieth century and which, in fact, have origins prior to those of the Third Reich.
The Finnish presidential flag. (Ragnar Singsaas / Getty Images)
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Kai Mecklin, former Finnish pilot and director of the National Air Force museum, has explained to the site Business Insider that guides must always hurry to explain to visitors that the Finnish swastika has nothing to do with Nazism. It is also the answer that university professor Teivo Teivainen normally receives from politicians and army officers, one of those who for years have asked for the symbol to be definitively abandoned, as he had explained to the weekly The Week.
The Finnish air force command has dropped the swastika from its logo without making an announcement. The air force had been using the symbol since 1918.https://t.co/AELQVz3lun
— DW News (@dwnews) July 2, 2020
The swastika has an origin dating back to at least 15 thousand years ago, and over the millennia it has spread a bit across the Eurasian continent. Today it can be found on Etruscan archaeological finds as on Thai temples, but its meaning changed drastically after its adoption by the Nazi regime. Since then in the West it has been closely associated with Nazism, and is therefore used almost exclusively in the extreme right circles. In Asia, however, it has remained tied to its original meaning, and therefore continues to be a very popular symbol especially in Buddhism and Hinduism.
BBC has explained that the Finnish Air Force adopted a blue swastika among its symbols in 1918, therefore years before the birth of the Third Reich in Germany, precisely for reasons related to its original religious meaning. But she continued to use it even after the Second World War, until it was silently removed from the last coats of arms in which it was represented, as Teivainen has noted in recent days.
The history of the Air Force swastika is linked to Count Eric von Rosen, a Swedish nobleman who designed one as a lucky charm on his plane, which he then donated to the Finnish army. It was the first aircraft of the Finnish armed forces, and therefore the swastika was also painted on those acquired subsequently. Finland was then an ally of the Third Reich during the Second World War, and von Rosen also became brother-in-law of the Nazi hierarchy Herman Göring and even a friend of Adolf Hitler.
After the armistice with the Soviet Union and the end of the Second World War, Finland removed the swastika from its planes, but continued to use it in other symbols of the air force. The opportunity of this choice and the possible negative repercussions on the diplomatic level have been discussed for some time. In addition to concerns about how the symbol could affect the already complicated relations with neighboring Russia, the Air Force swastika has become even more criticized since the Nordic Resistance Movement arrived in the country, a neo-Nazi political group with formations in all Scandinavian countries. To have a swastika in its own symbolMoreover, it is also the Air Force Academy: it is intertwined with the airplane propeller, in a representation that instead is very similar to the Nazi one.
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