17

SWEDISH NEUTRALITY

Two concepts significant for the image of Sweden within itself, as well as in the outside world, are neutrality and freedom of alliance. Neutrality, as in not choosing sides when two (or more) states are at war or in dispute; freedom of alliance, as in not tying knots of solidarity to other states. It’s generally stated that Sweden has kept up a policy of neutrality and freedom of alliances since the early nineteenth century. It is an interesting lie.

Already around the time of the 1850s Sweden broke the policy after solemnly promising Denmark that it would support it in defending its borders against Prussia. That particular pledge altered Denmark’s policies towards Prussia, but when the going got tough the Swedish king withdrew the commitment which, according to Swedish neutrality, never should have been given (and Denmark was then defeated in a humiliating way).

Actually, the whole neutrality issue started with King Gustav IV Adolf — a strange man with a strange life. After his father, King Gustav III, was murdered at the Stockholm Opera, he closed it. After being criticised in a French newspaper, he closed Sweden to the French press and French books. He detested France in general, and Napoleon in particular. As a result, he took Sweden to war against the French Emperor in 1805. No one supported the idea. When Napoleon formed an alliance with Russia, the crisis bloomed into full catastrophe as far as Sweden was concerned. King Gustav IV Adolf refused to accept any peace deals and ended up in a war with France, Denmark, and Russia at the same time. At that point, the king was violently overthrown by officers of his own army. Nevertheless, the defeat was unavoidable and at the peace agreement in 1809, Sweden lost one third of its territory and one million of its inhabitants. The sorrow and indignation of the Swedish nationalists was bottomless. Finland, which had been a part of Sweden for more than six hundred years, became Russian territory, and Sweden’s borders were redrawn and took the shape they still have today.

‘As Heaven is my witness, I would have preferred to have signed my own death warrant than this peace treaty,’ said Swedish diplomat Curt von Stedingk, who took part in the negotiations.

Now, two lessons were to be learned. Sweden would never again interfere in other countries’ wars. Swedish soldiers would never again be sent out to die on foreign battlefields. From then on, Sweden would be neutral. And, even though the country thereafter acted contrary to its own policy of neutrality several times during the nineteenth century, the idea of the neutral country remained at the very core of Swedes’ self-image.

The first major breech came at a time when Sweden was torn between the old class-based structure and strong liberal winds of change. In 1914, Sweden was led by a government that wanted to take moves in a democratic direction. The liberal Prime Minister Karl Staaff was in favour of universal suffrage and preferred social reforms to spending money on the country’s defences. The conservative nationalists could stand neither him nor his democratic ideas. With the Swedish Queen Victoria in the lead, they fought all attempts to introduce parliamentarism and instead promoted the idea of joining forces with Germany in the event of a war. They loved Germany, but feared Russia. Sweden was considered the ‘last country of westerners’ and its men were needed to guard the European continent from the Slavic people of the East. It was all about taking back ‘our’ Finland, honouring the ‘bloodlines’ to Germany, and reviving the superpower status Sweden had once enjoyed.

The liberal Prime Minister, with his voting rights reform and his ideas of not belonging to any power block, was considered a weak man. He was spat on while he took his morning walk through the fashionable parts of Stockholm on his way to the Parliament, he was called a traitor, and there were ashtrays decorated with his face where one could put out a cigar.

The conservative movement organised a march where 30,000 farmers protested against disarmament, and they were received by the Swedish king on the castle’s courtyard. The king’s speech was a direct attempt to discredit the prime minister and dissolve the Swedish government — and it was a success. The government was forced to resign. When the First World War broke out, the conservatives were euphoric and, without hesitating, stood on Germany’s side against Russia. No neutrality. No freedom of alliance.

‘Our preparedness is good’, Prime Minister Per Albin Hansson said in August 1939. That was not true. When the Second World War broke out, Sweden’s defence was weak again and the soldiers lacking in war experience. When Germany invaded Denmark in 1940, the neighbouring southern parts of Sweden were protected only by police patrols and small military forces where each soldier had a limited number of cartridges for his weapon.

As for the neutrality, it only took some Nazi pressure for the Swedish government to abandon it. In May 1940, German troops were trapped in Narvik, in the north of Norway, and help could only reach them via Swedish railways. Soon, the first major agreement with the Nazis was a fact: soldiers, military equipment, humanitarian aid, and healthcare workers were to be sent through Sweden. And, despite the fact that the Swedish Prime Minister Per Albin Hansson had informed the people that no concessions to Germany would be made as long as the war was continuing, his government allowed even more transits of so-called ‘humanitarian character’ through the country. (But did anyone really believe that a thousand German soldiers needed a total of four hundred doctors and nurses?) The concessions continued, one transit train after the other, so German soldiers in Norway would get food, weapons, and could go on leave. On 18 June 1940, Prime Minister Hansson wrote in his diary: ‘Thus we broke our dear and strictly held neutralism because of our knowledge that it would be unreasonable in the current situation to take the risk of having a war.’

Sweden had already given up its goal of following a policy of strict neutrality, in favour of a policy aimed at keeping the country out of war. In order to protect Sweden against a possible German attack, iron ore mines were packed with explosives. If Sweden was occupied, the valuable natural resource, crucial to the Germans’ war effort, could be blasted into smithereens.

Was there a real threat of Germany occupying Sweden — would that have been the result if Sweden hadn’t conceded to Hitler’s wishes? Probably not. New German research has shown that no actual German plans to attack Sweden were made, nor were there military resources for carrying out any assault. But how could Prime Minister Hansson be sure?

From July 1940 to November 1941, a total of 686,000 German soldiers travelled by train through Sweden, up to 1,400 men a day. Every week, wagons with ‘goods’ were transported to Nazi positions in Norway and Finland — a total of 5,000 wagons. Approximately half of the goods were considered to be war material.

Through Swedish waters there were twenty-six German shipments on more than seventy vessels. In addition, Nazi Germany had permission to send circa sixty courier flights a week between Germany, Norway, and Finland. This was probably more a question of passenger traffic than courier or mail traffic. In the northern town Luleå, the Germans had established a large warehouse of goods that was driven to Finland by Swedish lorries. The Swedish army also provided around 4,000 German soldiers with tents and stoves.

Throughout the war, Germany was one of Sweden’s most important trading partners, providing Sweden with coal and charcoal in order to heat people’s houses, and keep the factories going and the trains working throughout the winters. In return, Sweden sold Germany iron ore and steel.

The Swedish government balanced on a thin moral dividing line. Britain and the Allies become irritated with the Swedish-German trade, but Sweden also needed British oil and undertook an extensive trade in wood with both England and the United States. The strategy was to pretend that exports to Germany were within the ‘normal’ quota, although in fact they were significantly increased as a direct consequence of the Nazi rearmament policy. Despite the efforts of the Allies to stop Swedish exports of ball-bearings to Nazi Germany, Sweden maintained its trade with Germany almost throughout the entire war. Only on 12 October 1944 did Sweden ban all further exports of ball-bearings and roller-bearings to Germany.

Since then, the question has been raised whether this was a good strategy or not. Is it thanks to Prime Minister Hansson that Sweden was kept out of the war? What was the moral cost for keeping the Nazis in a good mood? Did Sweden excel in defending democratic values under pressure? All interesting and important issues, but maybe the crucial question is: if Sweden had acted differently and taken a rather more truly neutral line — could the war have had another course, ended sooner even?

During the Cold War that followed, the Swedish neutrality doctrine was summarised in the formula ‘Freedom of alliance in peace, with the purpose of neutrality in war’. The message to the outside world was that if war came, Sweden would not be taking sides.

After the end of the Cold War, the wording changed once again. Now it stated ‘Sweden’s military freedom of alliance, aimed at neutralising our country in the event of war in our immediate area remains’. In case of war, Sweden would choose whatever best protected national security in the specific situation. It might be neutral or it might not.

Below the surface, Sweden had become closely linked to the United States through cooperation agreements and military cooperation and finally, in the year of 2000, neutrality was completely deleted from the Swedish strategic doctrine. What never was, has now ceased to be, officially.