From Reuters

However, it is wrong to claim the flag demonstrates Finland condoning Nazism, historians and the Finnish Air Force say; although Helsinki did ally with Nazi Germany between 1941 to 1944 to fight off Soviet invasion (here).

A Finnish Air Force spokesperson told Reuters the swastika in the Finnish Air Force flag featured in the photos was introduced in 1918 – before Nazism rose in Europe.

“The first aircraft of the Finnish Air Force, a Thulin Typ D reconnaissance aircraft, was donated by [Swedish count] Eric von Rosen in 1918,” the spokesperson explained.

“He had painted his personal symbol of luck, a blue swastika, on the wings of the aircraft.”

That symbol, the spokesperson said, then became “the national insignia of all Finnish Air Force aircraft from 1918 until 1945. As the symbol of the first aircraft of the Air Force, a swastika remains featured in Air Force unit flags.”

After World War Two, blue swastikas on aircraft were replaced by blue and white roundels, while the emblem was used in the Finnish Air Force logo until 2017, when it changed the swastika with wings to a golden eagle with a circle of wings, according to 2020 reports (here, here).

Kai Mecklin, director of the Finnish Air Force Museum, affirmed the air force’s comments, saying the swastika was not used to demonstrate support of Nazism but an emblem of Eric von Rosen.

Mecklin told Reuters: “He wanted to mark the plane with his lucky emblem. This was years before Nazis existed. For us it is symbol of freedom and independence.”

Teivo Teivainen, Professor of World Politics at the University of Helsinki, told Reuters that the swastika’s 1918 appearance was “clearly a non-Nazi thing”, given the German National Socialist Party did not exist at the time.

Computer, look up this von Rosen fellow.

Swedish count Eric von Rosen gave the Finnish White government its second aircraft, a Thulin Typ D. Von Rosen, one of the founding members of the Nationalsocialistiska Blocket ("National Socialist Bloc"), a Swedish National Socialist political party, and later brother-in-law to Hermann Goering, had painted his personal good-luck charm on the Thulin Type D aircraft. This logo – a blue swastika, the ancient symbol of the sun and of good luck, which was back then still used with non-political connotations – gave rise to the insignia of the Finnish Air Force. The white circular background originated when the Finns painted over the advertisement from the Thulin air academy. The swastika was officially taken into use after an order by Commander-in-Chief C. G. E. Mannerheim on 18 March 1918. The FAF changed its aircraft insignia, which resembled the swastika of the Third Reich, after 1944 due to an Allied Control Commission decree, which prohibited fascist organizations.