Sweden's neutrality

World War II General WWII Discussion
#21

“swedish ranger90 Re: Sweden’s neutrality
in april 1940 sweden had 400,000 men in the army
if we have go in and help norway things may been diffrent”

Perhaps. The British & French attempted to send many well trained and equipped men to Norway and were defeated. Can you describe the Swedish army, particularly what sort of corps it had to quickly move into Norway? A large enough mobile force with good communications, artillery of all types particularly antiaircraft cannons, and good transport for supply, might hope to accomplish something.

#22

Um, well, weren’t the Belgians, Dutch and Danes and Norwegians neutrals as well? Neutrality didn’t mean a tinker’s dam to Hitler if the neutral country stood in his way, so “declaring neutrality” was basically worthless.

#23

Well, Sweden doesn’t border France. Belgium fell as a diversion to insure the French initiated the Dyle Plan, Norway was taken to secure transit from Sweden, and the Low Countries were attacked as part of the invasion of France knowing the French would try to aid them - something that was politically necessary but didn’t make a lot of purely military sense other than to keep an invasion corridor open into Germany. Hitler couldn’t attack everywhere, nor could he occupy everywhere. Nor could be risk getting bogged down in serious attritional warfare if things didn’t go according to plan in Sweden or Switzerland. Also, be careful with the assumption that taking and occupying a country merely solves your needs for access to their resources. For instance, when Germany conquered France, French coal production plummeted and never recovered, meaning the Germans never quite gained what they thought they would be…

#24

If I recall from some production books French production was only 30% of its prewar capacity at best, with German demands for raw materials and money though eating into French infrastructure along with the forced labour moved to Germany it was worse in many cases.

#25

I haven’t read a great deal about life in Sweden during and immediately following WW2. Were the Swedes patting themselves on the back as the biggest war in history boiled around them? Could anyone blame them for feeling relieved that the fickle finger of fate didn’t point at them? Did they feel any guilt for not taking sides? What sort of continency plans did they have? These are just some of the questions that come to mind.

#26

exactly

The point is that no one has ever worn such a stupid looking mustache ever since

huh?


#27

If I recall from some production books French production was only 30% of its prewar capacity at best, with German demands for raw materials and money though eating into French infrastructure along with the forced labour moved to Germany it was worse in many cases.

In “Wages of Destruction”, on nazigerman economy, it is stated that Hitler ordered the maximum extraction of resources from former French territory, rather than trying to reap whatever benefits a rebuilt french economy might have given. French economy and production suffered accordingly.

I haven’t read a great deal about life in Sweden during and immediately following WW2. Were the Swedes patting themselves on the back as the biggest war in history boiled around them? Could anyone blame them for feeling relieved that the fickle finger of fate didn’t point at them? Did they feel any guilt for not taking sides? What sort of continency plans did they have? These are just some of the questions that come to mind.

Plans: placate the Germans (trade), strengthen defenses, even to the point of building underground aircraft factory (whether any were complete during wwII I dont remember).

I read an article about the lack of any public reappraisal of Swedish policy and certain public figures political inclinations in the war years, sometime in the 1990s.

#28

After researching this a little bit, it seems pretty clear that far from patting themselves smugly on the back, the Swedes tread a very fine line between cooperation, collaboration and passive-aggressive resistance. Certainly, what the Swedes did was approximately the same as what the US did in relation to the UK prior to Pearl Harbor. Sweden supplied AA guns to both Germany and the Allies, but Germany got the iron ore, not surprising considering its geographical location. One thing greatly to Sweden’s credit is the fact that it gave refuge to Norwegian and Danish jews, in fact, pretty much all of Denmark’s jewish population. It’s just a guess, of course, but if Germany had invaded Sweden, I’m reasonably certain they would have been opposed, but probably without success. Fortunately for Sweden, that did not happen.

#29

One point worth considering is whether the Germans were particularly keen on occupying western European countries where there was no strong military reason for doing so, and where Germany’s essential economic requirements of that country could be achieved without occupation. There were, of course, advantages in having direct control of another country; it was much easier to direct its economic activity towards German interests (at least in the short term), and also simply to asset strip it. Of course, asset stripping tended to work against the interests of effective economic direction in the longer term. As against that, the occupation itself was enormously costly in itself, not least in diverting hundreds of thousands of troops away from critical fronts for fear of the increasing threat posed by the British “aircraft carrier”. Germany’s main requirement of Sweden was a heavy extractive primary strategic resource (iron ore) and, given the general circumstances, Sweden had little option but to supply it to her. Why, then, bother to invade ? Best regards, JR.

#30

My post was not on about a rebuilt french economy but about how the Germans with their systematic stripping of the country for immediate materiel prevented the French from working at anywhere near pre war production figures. The later demands for ‘Guest workers’ and conscription in some areas also removed workers from french factories and farms.

Rather shortsighted if a war is to stretch out as it did, occupied countries provided large amounts of raw materiel and finished goods or parts for the German war machine as well as huge amounts of money and food to pay for and feed the occupying troops.

A functional industrial base in an occupied country is much better than just the scrapings of the prewar production totals in raw material and goods. Hitler ordering the maximum extraction of resources but ending up with effectively 30% of the pre-war amount is a big fail.

#31

True, JR. This way, the Germans didn’t need to buy daily breakfast, lunch and dinner for an occupying army and a captive population. I have often wondered exactly the same thing as regards many of the Pacific islands that were subject to extremely costly invasions. Why not just cut them off from their supply lines and let them wither on the vine? Perhaps the same could be said for Japan proper which was effectively cut off from the rest of the world by US submarines. But then it would probably have taken much longer and probably would have been even more costly in Japanese lives than the fatalities caused by dropping the atomic bombs. Makes me wonder, though…