On the history of Finland

Like I have told you before, on Monday evening I went listening to a man talking about the history of Finland between 1808 and 1950. I will now write down some of the most important things. Not about the history of Finland but what was new for me and what was interesting. When I was there I wrote down more or less everything he said.

We have had 33 wars with Russia and 36 wars with Denmark. I don't like that they always make war with us without any reason! He said that when the new border was going to be negociated, in 1809, there were two main options. It was Kemi River and Kalix River. Since one of the Swedish negoitiators was sick, Alexander I himself said it was going to be the river inbetween, Torne River. Alexander also bribed the families in Finland by knighting them in order to get their support. In 1808 Finland had 180 noble families and in 1812 they were 300. Swedish currency was in paralell use until 1840. Many young noblemen worked in the Russian army and Mannerheim was one of those. During the Crimean War the French and the British attacked Finland a lot. Nicholas II didn't pay much attention to what the Finnish thought and women got suffrage in Finland in 1906 and with that they were among the first in the world. Hitler concluded that the Soviet army was very weak because of their problems and heavy losses against Finland in the Winter War 1939-1940. Maybe therefore he thought that he could easily conquer the Soviet Union. He also said that Mannerheim stopped his forces outside of Leningrad and that Finland helped the Soviet Union by kicking the Germans out of Finland in the Lapland War in 1944-1945 and therefore Stalin could send more troops to Poland on his way to Berlin. After the WWII Finnish people hid a lot of weapons cause they wanted to be prepared in case of another war. Some interesting questions were raised. Could Finland have regained their prewar borders if they had stopped by the old borders in the Continuation War? Could Finland have avoided to collaborate with Germany? Why was Finland luckily left outside the Iron Curtain? He also said that in 1945, the Soviet Union was so strong, they could have gone all the way to the Atlantic Ocean, if they would have wanted to.