> 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.
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.