Sweden in World War Two – making gold out of bombs

“Sweden has done more for the German war effort than is generally recognised. Above all, it has in some respects given us substantial support in the war against the Soviet Union – it is true that it protects its neutrality, but much to our advantage.” – Diary entry, Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Germany’s Minister of Propaganda, 28 January 1942.

[Originally published in Swedish at marxist.se]

In 1940, Nazi Germany invaded Denmark and Norway. While these countries were trampled by the black boot of the Third Reich, the neighbouring Swedish bourgeoisie and government chose to help Germany. This policy was not determined by any “desire for peace” among the rulers of Sweden but by the interests of the rich.

On the so-called ‘German trains’, the government allowed millions of Nazi soldiers and millions of tonnes of weapons and provisions for the German war effort to be transported on Swedish railways. First, the trains went through Sweden to Norway to supply the occupation. Later, they went to Finland for the war against the Soviet Union.

This was in breach of the Hague Convention’s regulations on neutrality, but such pieces of paper are not worth much when material interests are at stake.

In 1940, the government made its first of many ‘one-off concessions’ and the first train carriages rolled through Sweden to the Riksgränsen [on the Swedish border with Norway] and the German troops stationed there. The agreement, made on “humanitarian grounds”, was allegedly for the transport of forty civilian medics and “a few wagons” of medical supplies.

When the forty ‘medics’ arrived at the northernmost railway station on the Iron Ore Line, they exchanged their Red Cross armbands for yellow Deutsche Wehrmacht armbands. Then they skied off to join their fellow soldiers who, a week earlier, had shot dead six Norwegians and captured the station. Instead of a “few wagons of medical supplies”, the trains actually transported 36 wagons of provisions.

This was strategically important for the Germans. Their aircraft had difficulty landing in northern Norway and traffic was limited. Now the planes that had previously been used to transport food could be filled with ammunition, bombs and paratroopers to be used in the takeover of Narvik, to complete the occupation of Norway. Without Sweden's help, it would have taken much longer.

This was the beginning of a three-year co-operation in which German trains ran through Sweden. More and more, the requirements were relaxed and in the end, heavily armed Nazi soldiers could be moved through Sweden by train without hiding.

2,140,000 German soldiers travelled on Swedish railways during these three years. 100,000 wagons with weapons and munitions rolled across Swedish ‘neutral’ territory to slaughter first Norwegians and then Soviet soldiers and civilians.

Most of the soldiers travelling on the trains were on leave or injured, but thousands of armed soldiers were also sent. When it became too politically embarrassing to send armed soldiers on the railways, the solution was to have them shipped through Swedish waters with Swedish escorts. The Foreign Minister promised to consider it an attack on Sweden if the Soviet Union attacked German ships. In addition to train and ship traffic, Swedish airspace was also opened up to German aircraft.

Sweden is ruled from Berlin

But Sweden's dance to Hitler’s tune went much further than that. The President of the Norwegian Parliament helped the government and Norway's King Haakon to escape when the Germans took Oslo. He came to Stockholm and wanted to give a speech on Swedish radio to call for resistance to the invasion.

heavily armed Nazi soldiers could be moved through Sweden by train without hiding / Image: public domain

Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels – and later Hitler's second-in-command Hermann Göring – got wind of the planned speech and contacted his good friend, capitalist Birger Dahlerus in Sweden. Dahlerus put pressure on the Swedish Foreign Minister, who eventually banned the speech.

After this, several planned speeches and lectures in favour of Norway were stopped. Dahlerus' company, Bolinders, made big money from exports to Germany during the war, and after the war ended the same man testified in defence of his friend Göring at the Nuremberg trials.

Sweden promised to fire live ammunition if the British entered Swedish territory, and lit beacons on the west coast so that German ships could find their way to Norway. They mined the Öresund [the sound between Sweden and Denmark] together with Germany to stop British submarines and later made an agreement with Göring that Germany would send weapons to Sweden and help build up its air defences.

King Haakon was welcomed to Sweden by the Foreign Minister – but with the stipulation that he might be interned to satisfy the Germans. For his part, Prime Minister Per Albin Hansson wanted the Norwegian king to be interned immediately if he set foot in Sweden so that it would not appear to be a concession to Germany. Understandably, both King Haakon and the Norwegian government eventually fled to Britain instead.

This was seen as a betrayal in Norway, to say the least. The Swedish Foreign Ministry's attaché in Oslo wrote a comment in 1940 that speaks for itself:

“...what hatred and bitterness prevails here in Norway against us Swedes... One can hear expressions like ‘we would rather be under German or Russian oppression than under Swedish.”

“Good bourgeois”

Long before the outbreak of the Second World War, there were already strong ties between the Swedish upper class, the state, the establishment – and Hitler's Germany.

In his book Mein lieber Reichskanzler (My Dear Reich Chancellor), Staffan Thorsell explores these links. The title comes from the introduction to a letter that Gustav V, King of Sweden, wrote to Hitler in 1941. In it, he praised Hitler for invading the Soviet Union and for finally defeating the “Bolshevik plague”.

The military, political and cultural reasons for Sweden's covert alliance with Germany during the First World War were repeated in the first part of the Second World War. One important difference was that by this time the Social Democracy had become a key ally of the ruling class. Sweden's Foreign Minister Christian Günther explained this to a German agent, reporting to SS-Brigadenführer Walter Schellenberg, in 1940:

“Swedish Social Democrats have always been good bourgeois and are first and foremost for realpolitik. A change is taking place which I think Germany can be very pleased with.”

Like the class peace of the First World War, the Social Democrats were in an open alliance with the right-wing parties during the Second World War. Sweden was ruled by a coalition government of the Social Democrats, the Farmers’ League (today's Centre Party), the People's Party (today's Liberals) and the Conservative Party (today's Moderates). The Prime Minister was Per Albin Hansson of the Social Democrats.

The newspaper Social-demokraten initially took a harsh tone when Hitler took power, which Prime Minister Per Albin Hansson did not like / Image: Otto Ohm, Malmö museum

Only the Communist Party of Sweden and the Socialist Party were kept out of government.

The press is silenced

The pro-German stance of the Swedish bourgeoisie had not changed with Hitler's rise to power in January 1933.

The newspaper Social-demokraten initially took a harsh tone when Hitler took power, which Prime Minister Per Albin Hansson did not like. He especially disapproved when it began to criticise Hermann Göring, who was seen as a friend of Sweden because of his many relationships with the Swedish upper class.

Social-demokraten, along with other newspapers, wrote about Göring's opiate abuse in March 1933: “The swastika minister suffered from morphinism”. After Sweden's envoy in Berlin was personally scolded by Göring a few days later, the prime minister gagged the newspaper. Soon after, Göring founded the Gestapo and the first concentration camps. Six years later, the Swedish government banned a book that addressed Göring's drug abuse.

When war broke out in 1939, the government changed the constitution and restricted freedom of the press. Any newspaper that criticised Germany risked prosecution or confiscation. Zäta Höglund, editor-in-chief of Social-demokraten, who had by now left his revolutionary past behind him, refused, like several others, to fall in line. He was forced to leave his job. Ture Nerman, editor of the anti-Nazi Trots allt! was sentenced to three months in Långholmen prison for criticising Hitler.

One of the critics of the Nazis was the bourgeois newspaper Göteborgs Handels- och Sjöfartstidning, and Goebbels demanded censorship. This became a crisis for the government, a crisis that involved Gustav V, Hitler, the Swedish commander-in-chief and many more. The government banned several issues of the paper as a result. But above all, it was the left-wing newspapers that were censored, without controversy among the ruling elite.

“Most of the seizures, about 85 percent, concerned articles directed against Germany and its allies. And above all, it was the left-wing press that was affected. 200 of 313 seizures concerned communist, syndicalist and left-wing socialist newspapers.”

Communist newspapers were not only against Nazism but actively supported the Soviet Union, which angered and frightened the Swedish upper class.

The communist newspapers Ny dag, Norrskensflamman, Sydsvenska kuriren and Arbetartidningen were banned from transport between 1940 and 1943 and could not be sent by train, post or bus. At the same time, trains carrying millions of German soldiers travelled freely through Sweden.

Finland

When the Soviet Union invaded Finland, ‘neutral’ Sweden acted in a completely different way than it had done in relation to Norway. Here, it was a question of an opponent that the bourgeoisie was extremely interested in stopping – the Red enemy in the East. 

Much of Sweden's most advanced weaponry and equipment, including almost all of its ammunition, was sent to Finland – another breach of neutrality. A third of the Swedish Air Force was loaned to Finland.

Hitler assured Sweden, through Sven Hedin (a celebrated writer and explorer who was close to the Swedish royal family. He was also a nazi-sympathiser and friend of Hitler), that he would not intervene if Sweden sent troops to Finland. However, if a French or British soldier set foot on Swedish soil to help Finland, he would attack.

When Hitler prepared to invade the Soviet Union a year later, a large part of the Swedish military worked to help. The Swedish commander-in-chief wanted and prepared for Finland, Germany and Sweden to fight the Soviets together. He prepared a Swedish army to fight in northern Finland and wanted the government to prepare the people for war. The air force drew up maps of suitable bombing locations in the Soviet Union.

The Commander-in-Chief had talks with the King, who was in favour of the plans. But when it came to the Prime Minister, it was more difficult. The Social Democrats had just won a landslide election victory and the Prime Minister was balancing between the working class, which had elected him and disliked the Nazis, and German imperialism, which demanded Sweden's support.

To German diplomat Karl Schnurre, Per Albin Hansson emphasised that although Sweden could not take a stand for Germany, he “would like to emphasise the warm desire of the Swedish people and the Swedish government to maintain trusting and friendly relations with the German Reich.” These relations were vital to the Swedish ruling class. 

In midsummer 1941, Germany began its invasion of the Soviet Union and the Nazis demanded permission to send the Engelbrecht infantry division (14,712 fully armed soldiers) from Oslo to Finland through Sweden. His Majesty King Gustav V threatened to resign (woe and horror!) if the government did not accept the demand. Per Albin Hansson did as His Majesty wished.

“So our strict line of neutrality was broken”, Per Albin Hansson wrote glumly in his diary after the Midsummer Crisis. But right from the start, this neutrality had been ‘strictly’ in Germany's favour.

Ore for Hitler's tanks

Of the 11 million tonnes of iron available to Germany at the start of the war, 9 million tonnes came from Sweden, which had an enormous impact on the country's war effort. Sweden was paid in gold, often stolen from the countries occupied by Nazi Germany.

In the winter of 1939-1940, Churchill wanted Britain and France to collaboratively occupy Narvik to stop ore exports. They were convinced that it would “...end the war within a few months.” The plan was never carried out, to the relief of the Swedish ruling class.

Up till the autumn of 1944, around 85 percent of all Swedish exports went to Germany and its occupied states.

But for the Swedish capitalists, it was important to play for both teams. Undoubtedly, this made it much easier to gain economic advantages when the war turned against Germany. 

In the most important economic matters, the big capitalists were directly involved in Swedish affairs. Marcus Wallenberg negotiated with the Allies for iron ore deliveries, while his brother Jacob negotiated with Germany. We may never know exactly what Sweden's richest family was up to during the war or what they thought about these things. The Wallenberg family’s archives from the war are closed.

Labour camps and communism

"The three of them knew each other very well as active communists. 

— Now, damn it, they're gathering people up. 

It was 630 J. who said it quite spontaneously when the officer who had accompanied Thure K. also said something to the guards and disappeared. 

— No, you're babbling. There's no risk, we live in a neutral country. 

— Yes, boys, I'm quite sure. We come from different year groups and don't have the same education at all. Besides, I've been questioned about whether I'm a communist.” 

If the Nazis had occupied Sweden, the purge of communists would have been an easy task. Sweden had already done the preparatory work for them. Starting in 1923, the military had identified over 100,000 people who were known communists or suspected ‘unreliable elements’. The most prominent leaders of the Swedish Communist Party were arrested, but sometimes it was enough to have subscribed to a communist newspaper or to have criticised Nazism.

Nazis were not monitored. It was specifically communists and pro-Soviet activists who were targeted. The coalition government also considered banning the Communist Party of Sweden (SKP) several times.

On 10 February 1940, the security services carried out the first raids on thousands of communists' homes. On 21 February, some Soviet planes went astray and accidentally dropped bombs on Pajala [close to the Finnish border]. This contributed to the anti-Russian sentiment, and thus also the incitement against Swedish communists. From 21 March 1940, the transport of all communist newspapers was banned. Between 1941 and 1945, more than 11 million telephone conversations were intercepted and more than 47 million postal items were examined.

On 3 March 1940, the largest political terrorist attack in Swedish history took place when the office of the communist newspaper Norrskensflamman in Luleå was blown up. The bombers were a journalist from the rival conservative newspaper Norrbotten-Kuriren and four soldiers – all Nazis. Behind the plans were also Luleå's city prosecutor (chief prosecutor and police chief) and a captain.

Five people, including two children, died in the ensuing fire. But the trial never addressed these deaths, and those responsible were only convicted of vandalism. The longest sentence would have been seven years hard labour, but instead they were all pardoned by Hansson's coalition government in 1944 and 1945.

The first labour camp was the First Labour Company Storsien, outside Kalix, where 300 communists, socialists and trade union activists were forced to dig trenches and build roads. The site was chosen specifically because the SKP had its strongest foothold in the north of Sweden. The general who planned the camp, Archibald Douglas, was a Nazi sympathiser and was known as a “communist killer” who had taken part in the Finnish Civil War on the side of the White counter-revolutionaries. The prisoners had to endure severe cold and the ‘work’ they were forced to do was more like psychological torture.

"Captain B. had carefully instructed them on how the trenches should look. They were to be dug in widths two metres apart. The pits were to be two metres long, half a metre wide and one and a half metres deep, just like in a cemetery."

During the first three years of the war, when the bourgeoisie still believed that Germany would win, many labour camps were opened.

"Naartrjärvi south of Luleå, Öxnered near Vänersborg, Lövnäsvallen outside Sveg and Grytan outside Östersund. Between 30 and 40 conscripts in the navy were placed on the accommodation ships Bereut, Lagerbielke and Vesterbotten in Stockholm's southern archipelago. In 1941, the armed forces planned an expansion of the system and placed more than 3,000 suspected communists in work companies.”

Socialists were thus put in camps on a large scale by the Social Democratic-led government. A former volunteer in the Spanish Civil War interned in Storsien wrote a letter pleading to Georg Branting, a social democratic Member of Parliament and son of Hjalmar Branting:

"When we came home from Spain, the Swedish press wrote about us that we were the flower of the Swedish labour youth who had participated in the war against Franco. Now we've been locked up in camps without weapons and put organised Nazis in charge of us. Is this really how the flower of working-class youth is treated in our country?"

In addition to labour companies, there are said to have been at least 14 secret camps in Sweden, which historians Tobias Berglund and Niclas Sennerteg have described as concentration camps.

"All camps were guarded by armed guards. Those put in these camps were Danish and Norwegian refugees who were active opponents of Hitler and anti-Nazis who had fled the Nazis in Germany. At most 1500 individuals were in the camps."

The most senior political official responsible for these concentration camps was a social democrat, State Secretary in the Ministry of the Interior and future Prime Minister of Sweden – Tage Erlander.

The Holocaust

The most difficult thing for the Swedish state and upper classes to admit, for several decades after the war and to some extent even today, was their behaviour during the Holocaust, the systematic murder of six million Jews.

In the run-up to the war, Jewish immigrants and refugees were treated as inferiors by the state. Sweden was “one of the least hospitable countries” in the world for Jews. Other German citizens were free to enter Sweden, but Jews had a specific, very low quota. They were not considered legitimate refugees by the law.

Just a few months after Hitler came to power, a Communist member of parliament, Ture Nerman, raised the issue of granting Jewish artists and scientists asylum in Sweden. The parliament voted no. The Right did not want to “interfere in the internal affairs of other states”.

Anti-semitism was widespread among Swedish businessmen in the 1930s. The Swedish Small Business Association organised meetings against the “Jewish invasion” and submitted resolutions to parliament on reducing immigration. They supported the Farmers' League (today’s Centre Party) in the 1936 election, probably because they were the only party which had racism written into their programme.

“As a national task, the preservation of the Swedish tribe against the interference of inferior foreign racial elements and the prevention of immigration to Sweden by undesirable aliens is recognised.”

In 1938, all Swedish authorities abroad were instructed to ask anyone applying for a visa in Sweden which ‘race’ they belonged to. Sweden and Switzerland were the first to require that the passports of German Jews be stamped with a large red ‘J’ so that they could be easily sorted at immigration.

Detailed records were made of Jews living in Sweden. If Hitler had occupied Sweden, this part of the job would also have been done in advance.

Once the Holocaust started, the government censored news about it in Sweden. One example was the book Nazisthelvetet (Nazi Hell), which was withdrawn in 1942. The author was sentenced to prison.

In 1942, the Swedish Archbishop Erling Eidem received a letter from an SS stormtrooper detailing how Jews were gassed to death in concentration camps in Poland. It was the world's first such testimony from a ‘credible source’. Previous testimonies had come from occupied Poland and had been dismissed as war propaganda.

The two people behind the letter to the bishop had hoped that, in the hands of a neutral country, it could not be dismissed as propaganda. But the Archbishops kept quiet about the information. In retrospect, this is not surprising. As early as 1934, he spoke of how Nazism had meant a lot “for the national vitality and a cleansing of various decadent phenomena” and that “a similar cleansing would be needed in Sweden”.

Worse, the Swedish Foreign Ministry was also given access to the testimonies. Everyone chose to remain silent. The testimonies became relevant again after the end of the war. During the trials of Nazis accused of crimes against humanity after the war, it was questioned why these testimonies had not been published. The Foreign Office consistently maintained its innocence, as did the Archbishop.

Turncoats

The Battle of Stalingrad was the turning point in the Third Reich's war fortunes. From 21 August 1942 to 2 February 1943, the bloodiest battle in human history took place. The combined Soviet and German losses were close to two million.

The Battle of Stalingrad was the turning point in the Third Reich's war fortunes / Image: Wikimedia Commons

For the Soviet Union, Stalin's purges – including of the Red Army – and poor preparation had led to major defeats at the start of the war. However, the planned economy enabled it to move all industry from the west of the Soviet Union to the east, where it was safe behind the Ural Mountains. In a matter of months, it had recovered and was able to outproduce the Nazis in tanks, weapons and aircraft. This shows the superiority of the planned economy over capitalism, despite Stalin's bureaucratic rule. Hitler had almost the whole of industrialised Europe (including Sweden) in his hands but was still no match for the Soviet Union.

After emerging victorious from Stalingrad, despite huge losses, the Red Army began to push Germany back. They swept across Europe, liberating country after country. They liberated Auschwitz and other concentration camps. These horrors showed what the fate of the Soviet people would have been had they been defeated.

The other Allied countries had underestimated the workers’ state and now had to prepare quickly for D-Day and the opening of the Western Front. If they had not done so, they would not have met the Red Army in Berlin, but at the English Channel.

After Stalingrad, the Swedish government's support shifted to the Allies. In August 1943, German troop transports were cancelled. The labour camps were also closed the same year. Iron and coal exports to Germany continued at least until 1944, but officially Sweden distanced itself from Nazi Germany. Censorship against anti-fascists began to be lifted. The author sentenced to prison for Nazi Hell was pardoned by the King and allowed to publish his book under the ironic name of Nazi Paradise. A large number of Jews were allowed to flee to Sweden.

Even now, Sweden was not really neutral, but rather a ‘non-combatant ally’ – but now for the other side. Under the secret ‘Operation Where and When’, American transport planes were allowed to land and take off from Swedish soil. Training camps were set up for Norwegian and Danish ‘police troops’. Secret Allied intelligence bases were built on the border with Norway. Exports began to increase to the Allies.

Once the Nazis were defeated, Sweden took its new place at the side of US imperialism. Swedish companies such as Volvo, Saab, Electrolux and others profited enormously from Sweden’s avoidance of direct involvement in the war. Sweden participated in the Marshall Plan – the US plan for the reconstruction (and economic domination) of Europe. This was the post-war version of ‘neutrality’, but now in favour of US imperialism.

There is no real neutrality in the era of imperialism. For Sweden – a small but rapacious capitalist state on the fringes of Europe – the question has always been which great power best favours the short-term and long-term interests of its ruling class.

A national shame?

Today, now that so many decades have passed since these events took place, even the bourgeoisie can recognise the lie of Swedish neutrality.

Instead of pointing out the real interests behind that policy, they try to make it seem as if the people of Sweden as a whole were behind it. They talk about a national shame.

But it is not our shame, and it is not the shame of our movement. The comrades in the Swedish left, whom we count as our ancestors, did not build labour camps – they were put in them. They did not incite wars and make secret deals with dictators – they fought against wars and for peace at any cost. Had we been alive then, we would have fought side by side with them.

It was the Swedish nobles, capitalists, media moguls and royalty who contributed to and profited from both the First and Second World Wars. It was the right-wing bourgeois parties and the Social Democrats who helped them achieve their goals. Between 85 and 107 million people were sacrificed in these two wars, but no human loss is too great in the capitalist system's pursuit of profit.

Today, when the Swedish bourgeoisie, the Right and the Social Democrats are once again agitating for rearmament and an alliance with the big imperialist powers, we know which side we are on. They are imperialists panning for gold. Communists today, as in the past, are fighting against war and imperialism, and for world socialist revolution – the only guarantee of lasting peace.