For most people of Bernie Sander’s age, Sweden’s long-standing neutrality gave it an aura of progressivism during the Vietnam War when it lent itself to peace activism at the highest level of government. However, during WWII that policy had a much more malevolent effect insofar as it meant that the government would tilt toward Nazi Germany economically and militarily—this despite the fact that the Prime Minister Per-Albin Hansson was a Social Democrat.
In December 1939 Hansson called for a government of national unity that would include parties from all parts of the political spectrum except for the CP. He named a non-party career diplomat Christian Guenther as Foreign Minister to replace the Socialist Rickard Sandler, a move calculated to advance Sweden’s pragmatic view of neutrality. To avoid war with Germany, a nation that had already conquered Denmark and Norway, Sweden took a very flexible attitude toward Nazi troop movements on its soil. On July 8, 1940 the two nations hammered out a deal that would prove useful to Nazi war plans. Around 30,000 Nazi soldiers would board Swedish trains each month as the same railway transported 1500 trainloads of Nazi armaments. Although the rank-and-file Socialist objected to this, the king and Christian Guenther pushed strongly for acceding to German demands. As will be noted in the film clip below, Per-Albin Hansson was much more persuaded by these two men than he was by the ordinary Swede. full: http://louisproyect.org/2015/08/05/when-the-swedish-social-democrats-partnered-with-nazi-germany-in-the-name-of-neutrality/ _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
