Yes, this is insufficiently discussed, as is the sweden/rare-earths issues. Not ALL POWs were shot, but it wasn't all drinks on the balcony of the sanitorium until 1945
Oh man, the Swedes stubbornly taking pride in being "neutral" really grinds my gears
first of all, given how much Sweden helped the nazis, including literally transporting nazi troops to invade neighboring countries, and providing resources etc, they can hardly be called neutral,
second, in a conflict of *literal nazis* vs everyone else, being neutral is nothing to be proud of - any sane person can see that
but Sweden's education system very successfully brainwashes the population into eating that nonsense up, hook line and sinker
It's easy for us to pull out the "but literal nazis!" trope now, some 70+ years later. But in 1940, in another country weren't they just another ruling power in a neighboring country? I was always under the impression the majority of the atrocities, and in particular the camps, weren't really known outside of Germany itself until the end of the war or as Germany started to fall.
Already in 1940, the Polish government-in-exile was informing the rest of the Allies (incl. the British, the US) about German crimes against civilians in occupied Poland. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karski%27s_reports
I don't know how much the Swedes knew at that point though... However, given that they were a modern state, they must have had some intelligence agency, and the Germans weren't really working that hard to cover up their crimes either.
I was under the impression that at least the british knew, but keep quiet so that they can use the situatian in their favour later. Just like happened these days with Belarus for example.
To a significant degree the complete failure of the allied defense of Norway (not help by Norway complete incompetence of defending itself) plays a significant role here. It is one of those under-appropriated parts of WW2. Had Norway been defended Sweden would have been in a massively different position. They could have exported Iron Ore to Britain instead and Britain would have been in a position to help Sweden in its defense from potential German attack.
The Sweds had the Germans very close on one side and practically no other trading partner to sell to. Iron ore was vital to the Germans and there is no question they would have gone to war to get it, Germany controlled all export routes.
At the same time you have the Soviets, who are now often seen as the second biggest evil, but this was not at all clear back then. Lets remember that the Soviets had just conducted the Katyn massacre for example. The Soviets had invaded Finland and all the Baltic states. And their treatment of those places was far harsher then the Nazis were in Norway. 10000s of people from the Baltic states were transported to the Gulags at that time and most were never seen again.
So Sweden was stuck between a aggressive Germany and an aggressive Soviet Union with no way for the allies the help them in any meaningful way.
Germany very much had the capability of invading Sweden, specially once they controlled Norway. Just as the Swiss had no question that if Germany wanted to they could invade and take most of Switzerland.
Not being in that positions its easy for us now to be morally outraged. However, at the time a wrong choice could lead things mass starvation, air attacks against civilian population, mass rape and many other things.
> second, in a conflict of literal nazis vs everyone else
You should go back and actually look at WW2. It was not Nazis vs everybody else. In fact, because of Soviet actions in Finland, Baltic, Romania and so on, it was actually the case that many countries looked to Germany to protect them from the Soviets.
Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia were allies of Germany.
And Italy of course but for other reasons.
> they can hardly be called neutral,
Diplomatic neutrality does not mean you treat everybody equally.
I don't know about Sweden as much. But Switzerland changed is policies quite a bit once the allies had freed France and a Nazi invasion was no longer as acute a possibility.
But that's not how this is depicted or thought of in Sweden.
In Sweden's blinkered, self glorifying version, Sweden really were neutral (in the intuitive, common sense understanding of the term), when in reality they aided the nazis a lot
and they were neutral because neutrality is the correct lofty moral ideal which only the few and enlightened nations like Sweden and Switzerland understand and commit to, when in reality, they were "neutral" only because they didn't even care to entertain the thought of putting up a fight.
Last but not least, I for one doubt the popular notion that Sweden had no option but to appease the nazis - this is always just taken for granted with zero real thought or justification. (which again says a lot about how effective Sweden have been at controlling the narrative in their favor)
For the nazis, gaining the degree of control of Sweden they needed would have been a very formidable challenge - it's a huge country with diverse terrain, and ww2 was well before the current modern highway network. Sweden could have easily destroyed the nazi troops they transported by rail, or the rail itself so it couldn't be used to transport troops or resources, period.
Granted, at the end of the day this is all speculation and people will never agree on everything, I'm just saying, I think their version of events is very dishonest and people let them off the hook far too easy.
Couldn't the same be said of Norway? I believe Allied invasions on Norwegian islands (Lofoten) and other places (Narvik) contributed to German army being forced to station there, when all they really wanted to do after 1941 was to attack the Russian Convoy route. But, think how much better things might have been if British hadn't faced the loss of Norway for other reasons.
It's argued the british walk-out from Norway precipitated some of what happened in Finland and Sweden.
A functional defence of Norway surely would have been as viable as Sweden or Finland? (the Finns completely hammered the Russians. Ultimately to their geopolitical cost by 1945 but at the time, they were doing ok. I hate to imagine what a finnish attack on Leningrad (they stood back) would have done)
Denmark is tiny and flat and mechanized German troops could and did take meaningful control of the country in a matter of hours.
Norway is really mostly tiny towns dotted along a coast of impassable mountains. So taking control of the whole country isn't really required, but any transport has to happen by sea. (and the British successfully attacked nazi ships in the North Sea)
...which is why the nazis desperately needed Sweden and it's rail to transport troops and resources. But that rail is laid out over the full length of Sweden, a vast, vast area, that the nazis could never hope to meaningfully and safely control. The rail would have been easy to attack or disrupt even without a huge army of conventional troops and the Swedes could have done that, but they didn't.
/The Expert - I'll have you know I was a four star general during WW2 (or at least I used to play Hidden and Dangerous and Close Combat 2 on PC), AMA
And the Swedes did not attack German train transports because the traffic was according to a pass-through agreement.
USSR and Germany forced these pass-through agreements after Winter War. USSR was in pact with Germany, and both acquired permission to transit troops to their bases, Soviets to Hanko (Hangö) that it took in Winter War, and Germany to northern Norway which it took in April-June 1940. Sweden was surrounded from three sides by Germany, and in the fourth side was Finland badly weakened by Soviets attacking, with increasing Soviet pressure also after Winter War.
I don't think you listened when you were in school. This [0] is a quite typical example of how the history is taught in Swedish schools, and in even this quite short article about Sweden during WWII both the transport of German troops and the export of iron ore to Germany are prominent.
> In Sweden's blinkered, self glorifying version, Sweden really were neutral (in the intuitive, common sense understanding of the term), when in reality they aided the nazis a lot
I think you're being unfairly downvoted here, because the essential context is the collective amnesia that's a crucial part of a Swede's cultural identity.
It's not in any way limited to just this one historical event, but spreads to all sorts of erasures, such as the very recent forced sterilization program and the strong belief in eugenics in the last century - which in itself was a close spiritual tie to the Nazis.
People here in Sweden are extremely selective in their memories - but I've found they can reach way back in the histories of other cultures whenever they want to find faults.
Do you even look at Swedish mainstream media ever? Both the neutrality during the war and the sterilisation programs are regularly brought up in mainstream media, written books about and discussed.
> Do you even look at Swedish mainstream media ever?
These matters are definitely not widely discussed in "mainstream media" - I'd be interested in some citations if you think I'm wrong. I'd say they are known and discussed in certain circles, but they're definitely not taught in the school curriculum, in spite of being a large and intrinsic part of recent Swedish history.
For instance, the country's largest home-rental organization (HSB) was reporting 'misbehaving' occupants of their apartments as candidates for sterilization long into the second half of the twentieth century.
So sterilization was hardly a fringe issue, and yet I would be very surprised if Swedes under 20 have even heard of it.
Here are some resources currently used in Swedish schools about the forced sterilisation [0].
In the section about Sweden during the Second World War, there is a prominent section about Swedish "eftergiftspolitik" [1]. The second paragraph in the WWII article is about how Sweden sold iron ore to the Germans and how important that was to the Wehrmacht. So Swedens "neutralitetspolitik" is also prominently discussed in Swedish schools.
Here is an overview of the large debate about tvångssteriliseringarna mostly in DN (Swedens largest newspaper) in 1997 and later [2].
Here is a documentary from Sveriges Radio from 2006 [3] about the forced sterilisations.
It didn't take many minutes to find any of these sources.
> For the nazis, gaining the degree of control of Sweden they needed would have been a very formidable challenge
Yes, but for the Iron Ore supply they would have done it.
And that would have entailed very, very harsh reprisals against the population population if they engage in gorilla warfare. Bombing of the major cities and so on.
Of course you always have to option. And Sweden would certainty have been far harder to take then Norway as Sweden was far more ready for war then Norway.
A Sweden hell-bent on fighting the Nazis would have probably lead to an far earlier defeat of the Nazis.
The problem is, they would not get support from anywhere because of the geographical situation.
That is why I stress that the Norway situation was so critical. With Norway in Allied hands Sweden would have acted very differently.
> That is why I stress that the Norway situation was so critical. With Norway in Allied hands Sweden would have acted very differently.
Even more so, it was all decided in September 1939. If the French went out and attacked Germans like they promised they would, Stalin would never join the war (he waited for full 17 days before moving into Poland, to make sure the Allies will be the cowards he and Hitler predicted they were), and Germans would be tied with fighting on two fronts. Hitler was actually super-nervous about the attack on Poland - he bet it all on has a hunch the French and British won't do anything about it, which was a massive risk for him.
The French did attack within a week of the attack on Poland, using dozens of divisions and tanks and artillery, and came up with about 2000 casualties against 600 on the German side. But the French had not even fully mobilised by the time in mid-September when the Soviets joined in the attack against Poland.
Well, yes but the issue is that the French never wanted to fight that offensive war. They had not planned for it very well, the British were not gone be there in any numbers. Not even the Royal Airforce.
And if you are gone put up a fight for Eastern Europe, then why do it for Poland, it would have been 100x smarter to it over Czechoslovakia. Germany was in a terrible supply situation at that point.
The Allies had no way to help Poland other then an attack the other side. Unlike Norway where the Allies were perfectly positioned to provide help.
So my opinion is that you either fight over Czechoslovakia or you leave Eastern Europe and focus on keeping Germany out of the North and try to keep Italy from joining them.
The 'alliance' between Germany and the Soviets wouldn't hold very long. In that time you can build up your forces. Eventually Germany would probably force the situation with the Soviets and then the Allies are in control of the global supply routes and can basically decide who wins.
Basically its 3 groups, France/Britain, Germany, Soviet. The one best positioned is the one that stays out of the war when the other two go to the war. The one that stays out can build up its army and industry while the others destroy each other. You end up the winner by default.
The Soviets were that in 1940, but surprisingly for them France collapsed quickly and the German could turn around and attack them. Soviet strategy since 2022 was basically to keep Germany out of the 'capitalist' alliance, only for them to supply Germany with the vary resources they used to build an army to attack them.
Perhaps to make WW2 less strange, think of alliances as British/Russian group vs. French/German group with US participating at the end on the British/Russian side.
The Finns were German allies throughout. The pre-war Germans were supplied by Nordic steel while during the war they were supplied by French wheat.
The British/Russians were supplied by US tech, food, and arms
No they were not as Germany had very much agree not to get involved as the Soviets beat up the Finns. Despite popular opinion on Germany very much wanting to do so.
> Perhaps to make WW2 less strange, think of alliances as British/Russian group
Yeah but the Brits were about to launch an attack on Russia in late 1939. In total all the events between 1936 and 1947 are quite the diplomatic clusterfuck.
It took until 2018 for the swastika to be removed from the Finnish air force logo.
As for the British invading USSR, this could not be a serious consideration since the British military strength is mostly navy and air force but no ground troops.
The British planned on bombing Baku, the principle oil fields that was vital for Soviet economy. And the planned on sending troupes to Finland.
Finland has to take friends where they could find them. They used Germany to get back their land but only supported them as far as they needed to. The Fins could have done way more, and Germany was constantly pissed that they couldn't convince them to do more.
Mannerheim dealt with Hitler as a statement mostly. The recording doesn't prove they were friends. Its a discussion about military that does not sound that different from many other such meeting between Stalin and Allied officials.
There were German-minded Finns, also in government (eg interior minister 1941-1943 Horelli) but president from 1940, Ryti, was an Anglophile, and Mannerheim was cosmopolitan, a veteran officer of the Tsar's army, and had long considered St. Petersburg his home city. He had a hard time not showing how he disliked Hitler. Diplomacy with co-belligerents - and opponents - is then another matter.
And the swastika was, of course, the Finnish Air Force logo already in 1918 when Hitler was still in trenches on the Western front and no one knew anything of Nazis.
"Very close" is still rubbish. As that article of the recording says, "Mannerheim did not wish to greet Hitler at his headquarters, as it would have appeared like a state visit." But they of course did have a discussion about the war with a common enemy.
Finns and Germans definitely were not allies in 1939-1940: Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was in force, and when Soviets attacked Finland, Germany acted on its part and blockaded the Baltic Sea so that any aid from Western allies to Finland would have had to come through Sweden and/or Norway. That was a no-go.
I am not trolling. But I agree with you that I was wrong in saying that the Finns were German allies throughout. They were not allies from 1939-1940 and started to be German allies in 1941.
It is certainly discussed in Sweden. Everything from transporting German troops and materiel though the country on Swedish rails to providing most of the iron the Wehrmacht needed.
Could Sweden have joined the allies and fought against Finland though? Many Swedes even volunteered to help the Finns fight the Soviets, so don't be so cocksure that we would have joined the right side if we would have joined.
Well earlier in the war France and Britain were considering sending an expeditionary force to Finland to help them fight the Soviets. Sweden did not allow them to use their territory to pass, because they feared that the Allies would occupy the iron mining center in the north of Finland (which would have basically brought Sweden into the war against Germany) and the Winter war finished soon after anyway.
At the end of the day they might have made the right choice. Who knows what would have happened if the allies went to war with the USSR, their alliance to Germany might have lasted much longer.
The Winter war finished because Stalin whole strategy was not to go to war with Germany or the Allies before the were at war with each other.
He knew very well that France/Britain were seriously considering action, not just in Finland. A far larger danger would have been a massive attack by the RAF on Baku targeting the oil fields.
The reason the Winter war ended with such comparatively good terms is that Stalin had to end it or risk escalation.
> At the same time you have the Soviets, who are now often seen as the second biggest evil, but this was not at all clear back then. Lets remember that the Soviets had just conducted the Katyn massacre for example. The Soviets had invaded Finland and all the Baltic states. And their treatment of those places was far harsher then the Nazis were in Norway. 10000s of people from the Baltic states were transported to the Gulags at that time and most were never seen again.
You forgot Soviet invasion of Poland and shipping of roughly half a million of Polish citizens to Gulags. In the 18 months between the attack and the subsequent "amnesty" in 1941 (Stalin joining the Allies after being attacked by Hitler), already 50k of them were dead from cold, hunger, tortures and executions.
Yes I brought Sweden to the table because the complex story of neutrality in Europe is latent in both. And turkey of course. My fault for "starting a hare"
