>>1054Note on the German invasion: Often the Reds are argued, in a jingoistic telling of our history, to have "sold out" their country to the Russians, but what's forgotten are the actual selling-out by the Whites to the Germans.
More or less shortly:
>Erich Ludendorff: "To place a strong monarchy headed by a German-born prince is in the interests of both Germany and German nobility, as to counteract the growing democratic and republican tendencies of our time. Conversely, a republican Finland would quickly slide into the hands of the Entente.">August Thyssen (head of the Thyssen industrial concern) to the Reich Chancellor: "If we're unable of securing our hold on Finland, our wartime raw material supply is unsustainable and therefore the consequences to our position on the world stage unfavorable.">In 1918 the Whites signed in Berlin an agreement which:<guaranteed German political and military aid to Finland
<surrendered control of Finnish foreign policy to Berlin, directly in some matters and through indirect approval in others
<through a secret protocol gave Germany the unilateral right to construct naval bases on all coasts, including the Ice Sea
<trough a secret trade and seafaring agreement placed the control over domestic economic policy, raw materials, and foreign trade in German hands
<forced Finnish markets to open up to German businesses by lowering tariffs and import taxes for German produce to a low pre-war level, without giving similar concessions to Finnish produce bound for Germany
<connected the markets of the two countries on a "quid pro quo" basis, which, considering the wildly differing size of the two economies, opened up the door for German businesses to buy up Finnish industries wholesale
Unlike what some Germanophile rightoids believe, the German Baltic Sea Division didn't arrive out of their own goodness or merely out of pure military reasoning, but because the White government had sold off enough of the country for it to be a…
investment worth protecting through force of arms.
Had Imperial Germany not collapsed on itself, Finland would without question have lost its independence almost the moment it gained it, merely swapping the throne of the Tsar for the seat of the Kaiser. And, well, exchanging it's surprisingly autonomous economy for a foreignly dominated one, becoming in a sense—and quite amusingly—
less independent than before.