[S]ince its escape from the Red Revolution in 1918, Finland enjoyed an exceptional interest among Italians. In 1919, a significant number of Finnish officers joined the training service in Italy. Further visits to Italy were made in the 1920s and two first-rank Finnish generals were invited to a study trip by the Fascist régime in 1933 (Nevakivi 2006). The education of Finnish officers in Italy acquired a particular ideological dimension after the March on Rome.

Several extreme right-wing men like Lieutenant-Colonel Arne Somersalo, the very first head of the Finnish airforce, succeeded in visiting Italy. Somersalo and his fellows were potential top leaders of a pro-fascist Finnish movement and they were received by Mussolini. In fact, since its beginnings, the Finnish radical right had been inspired by the Italian example. In Finland, ‘fascism became a word of fashion meaning the anti-communist fight’ (Nevakivi 2006).

At the end of 1929, Attilio Tamaro was appointed ambassador (ministro plenipotenziario) to Finland and went to Helsinki.² Being one of the most important representatives of Italian irredentism in Trieste, he declared that he shared the Finnish motivations for independence. But Tamaro admitted, during an interview to the newspaper Hufvudstadsbladet, that his knowledge about Finland came from English and German books, together with the Italian translation of the Finnish poem Kalevala.³

He was particularly fascinated by Finnish nationalism and their sense of freedom. In fact, some years before, Mussolini had supported the Finnish struggle against Bolshevism. It should not be considered a mystery that Italy sold weapons to Finland during the 1920s.⁴