>>63961891
Pseudo-fun fact: In contrast to claims of the Reds intending to sell out the newly independent country to Russia, the Whites actually did. To Germany. Through various agreements and treaties, they acquired German support and intervention (against Mannerheim's council), surrendering to Berlin control of, among many other things, our foreign trade and foreign relations. Ultimately, things became bad enough for the victorious Whites themselves to bitterly call German Baltic Sea Division commander Rüdiger von der Goltz the "true regent of Finland". Despite this, by the autumn of 1918, many among them still believed in German victory in the Great War, and hoped for German nobility to take the presumptive throne of Finland even after they were defeated.
Alongside very favorable trade treaties permitting German big business to enter the small Finnish markets, which had developed surprisingly independently during the Grand Duchy era (in spite of various waves of Russification and repression), their actions could very well have led our country to be less independent than before, shackled to Berlin by powder, paper, and blood.
Were it not to German revolutionaries who put the final nail in trashing the Kaiser, that is.

History is a weird, entertaining mess.