The Swedish Midsummer Crisis of 1941

Non-alignment in peace and neutrality in war have served as the guiding principles of Swedish foreign policy since 1815. For nearly two centuries, Sweden has successfully avoided armed conflict and entangling alliances. A policy of neutrality has been regarded as the best means of guaranteeing Sweden's continued independence and prosperity. Sweden had managed to remain outside the conflict in the first world war, and sought to do so again in 1939. Yet this proved to be more difficult during the second world war, since the war soon expanded into Scandinavia and directly affected all Sweden's immediate neighbours. The most serious challenge to Sweden's neutral tradition would present itself in conjunction with the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. On 22 June 1941, at the outset of the Nazi-Soviet war, Berlin presented Stockholm with a petition to transport one armoured division across Sweden into Finland. Sweden was then positioned firmly within the German sphere of interest, and it was already allowing unarmed nazi troops to transit to and from Norway through Swedish territory. The Wehrmacht was deployed in Finland, Norway and Denmark; the Third Reich's hegemony in the region was uncontested. Sweden had been brought into Germany's northern strategic perimeter following the nazi invasion of Denmark and Norway in April 1940 and was not only strategically surrounded by, but also economically dependent upon the nazi regime. Sweden's relations with the Allies were pushed into the background and its foreign policy was now almost exclusively focused on maintaining a functional and cordial relationship with Hitler's Germany. Neutral Sweden adopted a policy of accommodation in the short run, in the hope that the final outcome of the war would allow for an independent Sweden

Crisis response · Economic history · Political science · Public relations · Eastern European Communism and Reforms · Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics · History

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