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1918-1945

After the collapse of Germany a socialist government was formed there which discussed peace terms with the Entente powers after the abdication of Bismarck. The socialists were bitterly opposed by a radical communist worker's party headed by Liebknekt who wished to maintain Germany's status as a Great Power and which carried out armed uprisings against the socialists. A corporal with an Iron Cross award for bravery in the trenches who was an undercover agent of the Army was a member of this party, a man named Adolf Hitler. As the son of a customs officer in the Austro-Hungarian Empire he grew up seeing the accrual of money by its mere collection from passing traffic: he also knew that the monies went not to his family, but to powers elsewhere. Exploitation must have seemed to be the way to become powerful. The family must also have suffered the approbation that surrounds all customs officials: men and women who collect dues from working people for the purses of the rich. The family may well therefore also have developed the latent paranoia of their trade.

The Germans exploited the differences between the Entente powers and a committee was set up to agree on changes in the treaty that would favour Germany.

A sole arbitrator was appointed, Marcus Wallenberg snr, one of André Wallenberg's four sons. Marcus was a major player in the Geneva Convention, the Dawes plan, the British-Swedish Trade Agreement whose aim was to secure food supplies for Sweden from the British Empire, the Norwegian Central Bank and the League of Nations. The Rhineland province was occupied first by Hitler, the industrial heart of Germany, the first of the departures from the Versailles Treaty overseen by Marcus Wallenberg snr.

The family adopted the motto "Be invisible". He was later to negotiate the withdrawal of French troops from the Saar. Swedish troops were employed to oversee the hand-over from the French to the Germans.

Marcus was first a financier and later a diplomat. In 1989 he had assisted his eleven-year elder brother Knut in assembling capital to buy out the mining company that had opened up the Kiruna-Luossavaara mines. This action avoided the mine passing into foreign hands. The company also comprised the railways that ran one hundred and fifty kilometres westward to the North Sea at Narvik and four hundred kilometres southeastward to the Baltic. The company also owned the port and harbour facilities at Narvik. Norway was then in a Union with Sweden, with Sweden the dominant partner. The Kiruna iron ore mines were unique in that the ore was free from an impurity present in all other iron ores, phosphorus, an impurity that made steel making costly and difficult. Kiruna ore was therefore essential for the production of high-grade steel of the type used for any advanced engineering application and for ball bearings and weapons production. Ownership of the Kiruna mines gave the Wallenberg family major influence in the conduct of any future war.

Knut set up the Wallenberg Trust which comprised enormous funds and which financed large sectors of the economy. The Wallenberg family, now comprising a father and five brothers, thereby controlled many of the leading figures in Swedish political and industrial life through investments or donations either received or to be received. For example, the only Business College in Sweden was set up by the Trust: the Trust could thereafter favour or influence any individual who had taken University Business studies. The Trust was given special status by the government in that it was granted immunity from inspection by anyone including the government or the judiciary, such as it was. In practice Swedish domestic and foreign policy, finance and industry were in the hands of the Wallenberg family. The family had now increased to seven active members since Marcus snr. had had two sons, Jacob jnr. and Marcus jnr. who were active in the family bank. This habit of calling sons by the names of uncles and fathers further increased the invisibility of the family since it became increasingly difficult to know which member had done what.

In Sweden, the economy expanded much faster than in France, Britain and Germany and was on a level with the enormous industrial expansion in the USA. Repayments of the loans provided during the war flowed in: in 1925 Sweden told itself it was once again a Great Power as in the days of Gustavus Adolphus, the Lion of the North who in 1632 had defeated the Catholic powers and secured the Protestant religion in Northern Europe. In the 1929 stock market collapse, Sweden decided, as a nation supplying goods for gold, to leave the gold standard, and suffered little, using changes in the exchange rate to keep the industrial sector strong.

Sweden had made vast profits from supplying Germany with a wide range of raw materials and goods. Much of the debt was repaid in coal from the Ruhr coalmines. The coal supplies were of interest to Sweden since the railway net was being expanded and intensified over the vast distances in Sweden. North to South, Sweden is as long as Europe: East to West it is as wide as Southern England or Northern Italy. Coal was also replacing charcoal in industry: the vast supplies from Germany which were payment for raw materials and armaments at inflated prices meant that Sweden carried out thirty years of industrial development in four years. The expenses of the defeat of Germany in the First World War were borne by France, Italy, USA and Britain: the revenues accrued to Sweden.

One of the war profiteers was a man named Ivar Kreuger. In 1911 Kreuger, a Civil Engineer, formed a company with his partner Paul Toll to develop a concrete plant they had built. When the war broke out the demand for concrete increased tenfold in Germany which lay only a few hours away by sea. In 1917 the company developed into a holding company, The Kreuger Group, which controlled the enormous international assets and enterprises the company had acquired. Kreuger kept control of the company by holding voting shares while most of the capital was obtained by selling shares with voting rights of 1/1000. He additionally obtained enormous funds by issuing participating debentures at variable interest. Kreuger controlled the Swedish bank, timber, pulp, mining and property sectors. A major part of the Group's activities was financing Swedish industry's investments abroad. Kreuger raised most of his capital from the Wallenberg financiers in the form of loans, so that the Wallenberg family controlled the Kreuger Group. Kreuger expanded largely through a form of bribes for monopolies: he offered states loans in return for a monopoly for one his interests, usually the then enormous matchstick industry, matchsticks being then the only form of efficient ignition both domestically and industrially.

In 1921 the financially unschooled German socialist coalition gave the provincial banks permission to issue loans without security, either in the bank or with the borrower. This led to roaring inflation: by 1923 the dollar rate was 1 billion marks to the dollar. Curiously enough a Swedish Chancellor of the Exchequer, Kjell-Olof Feldt repeated an identical manoeuvre in 1985 and bankrupted Sweden within six years. This bankruptcy led to Sweden's forced abandonment of its policy of isolation and racial capital imperialism, and to Sweden's joining the EU.

Germany was after the Great War Sweden's foremost trading partner. Additionally, as one of Germany's principal creditors, Sweden and the Wallenberg family had a vital interest in the establishment of a flourishing, industrial Germany. It is possible that through Hermann Goering the Wallenbergs heard of a promising politician, who could bring order to Germany, an energetic and forceful man called Adolf Hitler. Hitler's election campaign was unique and a first in the world of electioneering in that he travelled round the country by aeroplane. Such a campaign must have been astronomically expensive for an unknown politician without private means, but who had knowledge of the benefits of speed and efficiency of air transport in a large country from his deputy, Hermann Goering. Goering had no money so the only remaining candidate for the financing of this campaign is the Wallenberg family, the family with the motto: "Be Invisible".

When the world's stock markets crashed in 1929 countries and industries defaulted on Kreuger's loans and Kreuger could no longer repay the Wallenberg family loans: Kreuger's bank was the Wallenbergs' Stockholms enskilda Bank. When Kreuger shot himself in 1932 Jacob Wallenberg snr. was made liquidator. This irregular measure was taken as the affairs of the Kreuger empire were so complex that only Wallenberg had any grasp of them, and, unusually, the bankrupt himself was dead. Wallenberg persuaded the government to desist from the usual legal process following a bankruptcy in which the assets were sold to the highest bidder by an independent liquidator: the "Lex Kreuger" Act was passed. Instead, Jacob Wallenberg snr. acquired the assets and made agreements with overseas debtors on long-term repayment terms. Since Kreuger had been the major financier of German debt after the First World War the Wallenberg family in effect became the holder of the German Nation Debt.

Marcus Wallenberg had overseen the return to Germany of its industrial base. Even if the family had backed Hitler's campaign there was still no source of wealth in Germany to repay the national debt to the family: no source except of course for the Jewish banking community. Had the eugenic Dr Lundborg and the Wallenbergs suggested to Goering or Hitler that the Jewish banking community had assets that rightly belonged to the German people? The Swedes certainly considered the Jews to be an ethnically inferior race, and the Wallenbergs were fine specimens of Aryan splendour.

The German surrender in 1918 resulted in the Versailles Treaty of 1920 whereby Germany agreed to pay reparations to France, Britain and the US. The French were keen to receive reparations to compensate for the enormous losses of territory after the 1871 war 47 years before, and to compensate for the destruction of French resources and manhood during the 1914-1918 war. The French wished to avoid any repetition of German aggression. Britain took a different stance, partly because the historical debt resulting from Teutonic aggression was smaller, and partly because Britain lived by free trade. A Germany that was solely an agrarian state would harm free trade. The USA was against heavy reparations, partly because Germany did not immediately threaten it and partly because the second largest immigrant population after the British in the USA was German.

A German air force war ace named Hermann Goering left Germany in 1918 to set up a flying company to transport private persons of wealth or importance within Sweden. He stayed until 1922, meeting most influential Swedes and marrying the Swedish Baroness Karin von Fock-Kantzow. My Swedish wife's uncle once proudly showed me a snapshot of himself and Goering standing beside a plane called "Ingrid" after an air trip. Goering went to Germany in 1922, but returned after the unsuccessful 1923 putsch, spending some years in a hospital in Stockholm as a heroin addict; he remained an addict until his trial in 1946, a circumstance which was certainly of British advantage in the Battle of Britain.

In 1922 a Dr H Lundborg set up the Eugenics Institute in Uppsala. Its aim was to "research Sweden eugenically by studying the social situation and possibilities for development for various families, to survey both the influence of biological inheritance and the importance of environment for individuals, families and races as well as to study the inheritance situation as regards sickness and normal human qualities." These aims were easy to accomplish through the census carried out by the Lutheran Church: every individual had been registered in detail in writing by the local church parson. These records included behaviour; racial characteristics and any other subjective opinion the clergyman felt inclined to include. In 1934 a law, Law 14; 1934, was enacted in Sweden which stated "If there is reason to suppose that anyone who suffers from madness, mental deficiency or other change in their mental activity so that that person is for these reasons unable to manage the care of their children or will through their genes pass on to their children madness or mental deficiency, then sterilising of that person may be carried out without that person's permission, in cases where that person lacks the ability to provide valid agreement to sterilisation." In 1936 the law was extended, Law 22; 1936, to include enable voluntary sterilisation of certain genetically inferior persons, such as criminal persons, who were not covered by the 1934 law. In practice, no one was released from any institution such as a mental hospital, orphanage or prison without "agreeing" to being sterilised. These laws were in force in part until 1977. Most of the doctors of today have therefore had the power to sterilise almost anyone they wish. This has always provided doctors with immense powers. These have gone far beyond that of doctors in any other country apart from Nazi Germany and have given doctors an immunity from any prosecution or civil accountability; a situation that still exists. It also gave similar powers to the clergy who provided the information on which doctors could act.

Kreuger had issued bills to bankrupt countries in return for matchstick monopolies in the countries concerned. When the bills fell for payment the stock market crash meant that Kreuger was not repaid for his bills since no country could obtain credit any more. The shortfall in the Kreuger companies was two billion dollars in 1932 values. When Kreuger's creditors claimed payment the profits from the match monopolies were not sufficient to repay the debts. Kreuger's banker was Marcus Wallenberg of Stockholms enskilda Bank. When Kreuger shot himself Wallenberg was made liquidator. This irregular measure was taken as the affairs of the Kreuger empire were so complex that only Wallenberg had any grasp of them, and, unusually, the bankrupt himself was dead.

Wallenberg bought the profitable parts of Kreuger's empire at prices he himself decided instead of selling them for as much as he could get.

When the Jewish-American family Guggenheim put in a bid for Kreuger's Boliden gold mining company in 1932, Wallenberg persuaded the government to introduce a second bill preventing foreigners from buying Swedish companies, the "Lex Boliden". This is the reason that Swedish Companies have 'A' shares with voting rights and 'B' shares with no voting rights. Only Swedes could buy 'A' shares, a unique situation that has existed for sixty-eight years. The "Lex Boliden" also meant that the Wallenberg family could control a company by issuing a few 'A' shares, which they owned, and many non-voting 'B' shares, which the public held. Much of Swedish industry has been owned in this fashion for the last sixty-eight years, a system that has been illegal in most other countries. The assets of the Wallenberg bank in the thirties were a thousand billion pounds in today's money values: this in a country with a population of six million.

The Lex Boliden was in force until 1995: Sweden was bankrupt in the early 1990s and had to join the European Economic Area. It was then forced to repeal the Lex Boliden since it was an unfair trading law. The Lex Boliden also meant that the Wallenberg family could control a company by issuing a few 'A' shares, which they owned, and many 'B' shares, which the public held. Much of Swedish industry has been owned in this fashion for sixty years, a system that is illegal in most other countries. Even today Sweden attempts to exclude foreigners from buying stock in government-owned companies which sell shares to the public, the latest example being the flotatation of a subsidiary of Telia, the Swedish state-owned telephone company.

The Kreuger paper interests were bought at a knock-down price by Wenner-Gren, a keen Nazi and founder of the race institute in Uppsala. The Swedish encylopedias of the time speak of his philanphropic works in the field of medicine. However, these consisted mainly in setting up the Race Biology Institute of the University of Upsala and the propagation of sterilisation of those without arian characteristics, a regime which existed in part until 1976. Persons are still claiming compensation of $10000 offered to victims five years ago by the Social Democrats after media pressure, the party in power when the original euthanasia laws were passed.

In November 1931 Adolf Hitler's party entered the German parliament as the largest party.

In Sweden that year mounted troops shot four workers in a riot caused when the infantry tried to stop a large mob of union workers beating up non-union workers during a strike. The reaction to these shootings, combined with the resignation of the ruling Liberal party after an admission by its leader of taking bribes from Ivar Kreuger, led to the Swedish Socialist Party being elected to power in 1932. Non-Arian foreigners were still not allowed to immigrate and the Swedish Socialist Party was in essence a racist party based on the votes of Arian Swedish workers. The Swedish unions held real power because of their ability to produce votes.

The Wallenberg family immediately started negotiations with the Party. The Wallenbergs offered a closed shop, block votes to the trade unions, guaranteed yearly wage negotiations, shop steward rights, and blackballing rights. Little of this cost the employers much since labour was going to be in short supply if the Wallenbergs' plans to revitalise the German economy were to be realised; the Wallenbergs needed every worker they could get at any price. The unions agreed to a military-style 'obedience' clause giving the employers the absolute right to give orders to subordinates. This culminated in a formal agreement called the Saltsjobad agreement after the seaside resort where it was made. From then on employment in a Swedish company led to a situation for the employed in which they had no rights at all, be they salaried, hourly-paid or piecework employees unless the union agreed to negotiate on their behalf. The unions and employers instigated a legal system of their own outside the civil and criminal law, a system still in force today. From this point on the unions were the paymasters of the Swedish Socialist Party and therefore in practice determined all Swedish policy. This is still the situation. The principle of 'no taxation without representation' is not known to the Swedes. The Party also passed a bill protecting its finances from any independent scrutiny.

During the thirties Sweden started to rearm Nazi-German. The Wallenbergs started setting up a series of front companies for the Nazis by purchasing German companies around the world, which then legally became Swedish companies. For example, they bought the American Bosch Company and the I.G.Farben Company's subsidiaries. Several Swedish companies set up subsidiaries in Nazi Germany run on slave labour, such as the SKF Schweinfurt ball-bearing factory. Another method of increasing Nazi influence was to arrange secret share holding by Nazis in Swedish Companies. The Wallenbergs engineered a secret purchase by Krupp of a holding in the Swedish Bofors armaments company. Bofors developed the 40 mm AA gun, the gun produced in most numbers in the world during the war. From this the German 88 AA gun was developed which in addition to being an AA gun became the most effective anti-tank gun in the German arsenal.

Nazi-Germany asked the Swedes not to admit Jews in the early thirties. Jews had been allowed to reside in Sweden since the time of Gustav III, 1760, and the government asked the Chief Rabbi of Sweden what he thought of this request. The Rabbi supported the German request. This answer may have been due to the Jews in Sweden being an established and influential group. For example, they controlled much of the media and publishing houses. Perhaps the chief rabbi had no interest in the immigration of poor Jews from East Europe and Russia. In the thirties there were only a quarter of a million Jews in Germany and the threat that the German diplomats painted was of an influx of millions of Jews from the east where pogroms were frequent.

The Swedes may also have put the question to the Rabbi with a reminder that immigration of Jews to Sweden might increase the chances of occupation of Sweden by Germany. This would render the position of Jewish residents in Sweden most dangerous. The Swedish Chief Rabbi may also have felt that German or east European Jews were jumping from the frying pan into the fire since Sweden had been a racist society since the end of the Great War, mainly as a result of Trades Union and right-wing influence. Much of the Swedish establishment consisted of Junker landowners from Prussia and the Baltic States who had moved to Sweden when these states had thrown off the Swedish yoke. Even today the telephone directory for the richest parts of Stockholm has many 'von's and 'af's listed.

Since 1917 immigrants were required to obtain visas before entry and a residence permit and a work permit, which was only granted after approval by the trades unions; a closed shop was in force, and, by decree, foreign residents did not have the same rights as Swedes. The rights of foreign residents were restricted to certain specified rights: for example they had no right until 1995 to own land or property, to carry out a trade or profession, to own a company or shares, or to sit on the board of a company. Their permits were reviewed every year. The official view of immigrants was that they were only in Sweden while they were of use to Sweden as labour. Swedes on the other hand made use of opportunities in other countries. For example, any resident in Britain of any nationality had the protection of the Common Law and of the principle in law of Equity (Fairness). The only way Swedes could live with this double standard without even noticing the anomaly was to assume they were part of a 'master race': they could then take for granted rights that they denied to others in Sweden.

Nazi-Germany asked the Swedes not to admit Jews in the early thirties. Jews had been allowed to reside in Sweden since the time when George III needed loans in 1760. There was a small group, about five thousand, of prosperous Jews in Sweden who controlled the publishing, clothing and clothing retail industries. The government asked the Chief Rabbi of Sweden what he thought of this request. The Chief Rabbi supported the German request.

Since 1917 immigrants were required to obtain visas before entry and a residence permit and a work permit, which was only granted after approval by the trades unions; a closed shop was in force, and, by decree, foreign residents did not have the same rights as Swedes. The rights of foreign residents were restricted: for example they had no right until 1995 to own land or property, to carry out a trade or profession, to own a company or shares, or to sit on the board of a company. Their permits were reviewed every year. The official Swedish view of immigrants was that they were only in Sweden while they were of use to Sweden as labour. Swedes on the other hand made use of opportunities in other countries. For example, any resident in Britain of any nationality had the protection of the Common Law and of the principle in law of Equity (Fairness). The only way Swedes could live with this double standard without even noticing the anomaly was to assume they were part of a 'master race': they could then take for granted rights that they denied others in Sweden.

The Swedes, together with the Swiss, requested a meeting with the Germans and asked how they were to know which Germans entering Sweden were Jews since there were many Germans travelling from Germany to Sweden: Sweden lies about seventy kilometres from Germany and there was a regular ferry service. Also, Swedes often had surnames inspired by the Bible such as Abrahamsson, Isaaksson, and Josephsson and the customs officials thus had difficulty in recognizing Jews by their surnames.

It was suggested that the Germans put a 'J' in the passports or papers of Jews, a measure that must have cost the lives of thousands of Jews trying to escape to Sweden and to other countries.

During this period Britain allowed free immigration of Jews, arranged for seventy thousand Jews to travel to Palestine, and arranged and paid for the transport by rail of ten thousand Jewish children to Britain from Germany in 1939. About seventy thousand Jewish refugees entered Britain between 1930 and the outbreak of war. The distance from Berlin to Britain is a thousand kilometres. The distance from Germany to Sweden is seventy kilometres.

Many Jews had traditionally entered Sweden to work as doctors since Sweden had a chronic shortage of doctors, mainly due to the restrictions on the numbers of doctors being trained set by the Doctor's Union. In 1938, Swedish Pharmacy students at Uppsala University marched in a demonstration from the Institute of Race Biology, which was part of the medical faculty, to the Chancellor's offices demanding that no Jewish pharmacists, doctors or chemists be allowed to enter and work in Sweden. Since no Jews had entered Sweden for several years the protest was an exceptionally nasty example of racism. A student at Upsala at this time who a member of the Swedish Nazi party was Sverker Åström. As a diplomat he headed Sweden's cover-up propaganda strategy after the war. He developed an ingenuous line of argument that ran as follows: "Sweden had to make concessions to the Nazis during the war in order to prevent us being brought into the war or being occupied. These diversions from our neutrality policy were sacrifices we had to pay".

The Jewish refugees who managed to get into Sweden through contacts or luck have naturally always been overjoyed at having been received by Sweden: they have borne witness to this help in many TV programmes and lecture tours. Nearly all the refugees who were turned back at the Swedish border were exterminated and cannot therefore be heard concerning their views of their treatment by the Swedes.

I once worked for an American Jewish lady in London. She had travelled on a neutral Swedish merchant ship from America to England before America entered the war. The ship was boarded by a German warship and the passengers taken aboard, after which the merchantman was sunk. Those passengers who were not Swedes were locked up in stifling heat in the hold. The Swedish crew and Swedish passengers were given cabins by the Germans and treated as guests. The American lady told me how they could hear the parties of the Germans and the Swedes every night and the drunken exclamations of "Skol" and "Prosit".

Many Jews had traditionally entered Sweden to work as doctors since Sweden had a chronic shortage of doctors, mainly due to the restrictions on the numbers of doctors being trained set by the Doctor's Union. In 1938, Swedish Pharmacy students at Upsala University marched in a demonstration from the Institute of Race Biology, which was part of the medical faculty, to the Chancellor's offices demanding that no Jewish pharmacists, doctors or chemists be allowed to enter and work in Sweden. Since no Jews had entered Sweden for several years the protest was an exceptionally nasty example of racism.

A student at Upsala at this time who a member of the Swedish Nazi party was Sverker Åström. As a diplomat he headed Sweden's propaganda strategy and policy of collective amnesia after the war. The main thrust of this was to attack British colonialism, French colonialism and the American involvement in the Vietnam war. Simultaneously, the Swedes switched from German to English as the foreign language learned at school, cut the history of the war to half a page in schools and took numerous initiatives to support so-called peace manifestations, infesting international agencies with socialist peace propagandists. Little of this made any impression on nationals of those countries that had fought the Germany, Italy and Japan, but it worked superbly in Sweden, relieving the Swedes of any duty to come to terms with their support of Nazi Germany. It also neutraled right-wing parties who had been even more pro-Nazi than the Socialists. Swedish support of the Nazi regime was redefined as "the concession policy", which gives the impression of unwillingness on the part of the Swedes. However, there is no historical evidence of any reluctance to supply the Nazis, primarily with high-quality iron ore and ball-bearings: the opposite is the case since the companies responsible actually had subsidiaries operating in Nazi Germany and running on slave labour. Supplies continued until Germany's surrender in 1945.

The Germans operated a censorship of Swedish media and correspondence throughout the war. German troops and supplies were transferred, most profitably, in line with German requirements. A large German supply depot was maintained by a German officer at Luleå to supply the northern Russian front and German ships regularly entered the Luleå harbour with supplies. These were then carried by Swedish hauliers to Finland where German military transport took over. The Swedish foreign minister throughout the war was a non-elected non-political descendent of a German aristocratic family named Günther: the Germans referred to him as Herr von Günther.

The Institute of Race Biology had been set up in the 1920s to determine which Swedes did not have suitably 'Arian' features. Those who the doctors felt did not have a suitable appearance were sterilized. This empowerment was in force until 1975. Incidentally, this gave enormous power to doctors in Sweden who could enforce sterilization of patients for a range of arbitrary reasons.

The Jewish refugees who managed to get into Sweden through contacts or luck have always been overjoyed at having been received by Sweden: they have borne witness to this help in many TV programmes and lecture tours. Nearly all the refugees who were turned back at the Swedish border were exterminated and cannot therefore be heard concerning their views of their treatment by the Swedes.

I once worked for an American Jewish lady in London. She had travelled on a neutral Swedish merchant ship from America to England before America entered the war. The ship was boarded by a German warship and the passengers taken aboard, after which the merchantman was sunk. Those passengers who were not Swedes were locked up in stifling heat in the hold. The Swedish crew and Swedish passengers were given cabins by the Germans and treated as guests. The American lady told me how they could hear the parties of the Germans and the Swedes every night and the shouts of "Skol" and "Prosit".

Jacob Wallenberg snr. signed a trade agreement on behalf of the government with Nazi-Germany at the outbreak of war. His brother Marcus signed a similar trade treaty on behalf of the government with the British in London. This bizarre arrangement which stymied British action against Sweden arose partly because the British needed SKF's ball bearings, and was partly due to the composition of the British side signing the agreement. Sir Charles Hambro headed the British Delegation. He was head of Hambro's bank, a Swedish bank. He was also married to Dorothy MacKay, Marcus' ex-wife and the mother of Marcus two children, Marc and Peter. It was more a family get-together than an agreement that protected British interests. Another contributory factor to this incredibly disadvantageous agreement was that the British Legation Head in Stockholm, Victor Mallet had 'gone native': he played tennis once a week with a member of the Wallenberg family.

From 1933 to 1943 Sweden developed and deepened their contacts with Nazi Germany. The athlete Gunder Hägg was sent on tours to Germany and German athletes were invited to Sweden.

Sweden attended the Winter Olympics of 1935 in Garmisch-Partenkirchel, the only non-Axis European country to do so.

When Goering was Hitler's Foreign minister, relations with Sweden were conducted on an informal basis. When Ribbentrop became Foreign Minister in 1935 he was much firmer with the Swedes. This must have caused some resentment since the protégé was turning into the master. Ribbentrop met the Swedish Foreign minister Günther in 1935. The most likely outcome of that meeting was a Ribbentrop-Günther protocol. Hitler formed non-aggressoin pacts with every nation he dealt with and the full texts of these agreements have been available after the war, with the exception of all the neutral countries who have no interest in revealing any such agreements.

The Swedes have never released the files from this period. The Swedish Socialist Party introduced a Bill allowing the period of secrecy for any classified appointment or document to extend for up to one hundred and fifty years: it has since been impossible to obtain information regarding this period, even from humble Home Guards on their deathbed. Since nearly every Swede was conscripted in some form this eternal secrecy has applied to nearly every adult Swede. The ground was well laid for a cover-up.

The Wallenbergs and the government began to feel the need for a secret police service. They therefore sent policemen to Germany to be trained by the Gestapo. This Swedish Gestapo still exists: they are easily recognized by their pullovers and 'student' appearance. Their conversation is cluttered with the phrase 'we Swedes are decent chaps' while they compile a dossier on you. Twice they have interrogated me, once when I arrived in Sweden in 1965 and again in 1981: they asked me for the political opinions of my entire family back to my grandparents.

The Swedish Gestapo still exists and different governments of various complexions have always refused to open any of the files.

During the thirties the Socialists also developed the idea of the 'neutral nation', even in peacetime. Most people consider that their country is either at war or not at war. The third status of 'Neutrality' is an artificial construction: what is the corresponding status of a nation not at war? Peaceability? The effects of this construction are, however, far-reaching: the country is never 'not at war'. The construction of a third type of existence mean that the measures usually only defensible in a country at war can be continued even when no war is taking place. Western liberalism relates individual morality to public responsibility; Swedish political thought has tended to separate them. This explains in part the totalitarian nature of Swedish society.

When war broke out in 1939 Sweden declared itself neutral.

The Wallenberg agreement with the British was initially successful, but when Winston Churchill became prime minister the first matter he took up in cabinet was the prevention of iron ore from the mines at Kiruna reaching Germany: without the high quality iron ore from Kiruna Germany could not wage the war. The ore was shipped down along the coast of Norway in the Inner Leads in Norwegian territorial waters and could therefore not be attacked by British warships, which then controlled the North Sea.

The sales of iron ore to Germany were of great interest to the Swedish State. The mines were 50% owned by the State, which also received a royalty of 1.5 crowns per ton sold. The railways on which the ore was transported to Narvik and Luleå were owned by the State, which received profits from this transport. Any loss of ore sales to Germany was an immediate threat to the Swedish Exchequer. The future of the Swedish Socialist Party with its plans for a welfare state depended on the continued supply of ore to nazi Germany.

The other 50% of the Kiruna mine was owned by Wenner-Gren, who had bought the shares after the Kreuger crash. He was a nazi and a keen supporter of Sweden's Eugenics programme. Wenner-Gren was clearly interested in his ore reaching his customer, Germany. When the war broke out he left on his yacht for his estate in the West Indies for the remainder of the war. The Wenner-Gren Institute still provides funds for those interested in studying matters biological and are eagerly sought by those unaware of the origins of the Institute.

Early in the war the supply ship of the German Graf Spee pocket battleship, the Altmark, had entered the Norwegian port of Bergen. The Altmark carried three hundred seamen from ships sunk by the Graf Spee. As a neutral, Norway was bound by the 'London Agreement' which governed the actions of neutral countries, to search the ship for contraband. It did not find any contraband and the Altmark proceeded down the Norwegian coast and hid in a fjord. The British destroyer Cossack followed her and asked the Norwegians to carry out another search. They refused to do this. Churchill then personally ordered the crew of the Cossack to board the Altmark and to release the seamen. The crew succeeded in doing this, in a manner reminiscent of the seventeenth century.

Britain had plans for landing at Narvik, but due to Hitler's success in France the action was cancelled. Instead, mines were lain in the Norwegian Inner Leads. This led to the occupation of Denmark and Norway by Germany. The purpose was to clear the mines and protect this route for the Swedish Kiruna iron ore. It took only two thousand German troops to take Narvik and one wonders where the Norwegian army was. Usually it requires a superiority of three to one to take a defended position and Narvik was particularly well protected by the high cliffs of the fjord. Narvik had a population of ten thousand: it might appear that some Norwegians were as keen as the Swedes that the profits from the transport of iron ore to Germany keep flowing.

British troops were then landed near Narvik in the middle of winter, poorly equipped for the deep snow. However, they captured Narvik. The successful German invasion of France meant that the ships and planes required to supply the troops at Narvik were diverted to protect Britain and the troops at Narvik were therefore evacuated.

The Swedes call the Second World War 'the war of the Great Powers'. However, at the time Narvik was attacked Britain was the only country at war with Germany. The 'Great Powers' already conquered were Austria, Czeckoslavakia and Poland. By the end of the war other 'Great Powers' conquered included Belgium, Holland, France, Greece, Rumanian, Bulgaria, Slovania, Croatia, Albania, Herzogovina, and Serbia.

While calling the Swedish position during the war "the policy of concession" the Swedes have avoided the rather academic question of whether Swedish opposition to Germany would have made any difference, and there is little point in any discussion of that since there was no Swedish desire to oppose Germany. It has, however, been estimated that sabotage of the Kiruna mine would have shortened the war by two years. It is also difficult to foresee the results of taking a moral stance: the opposition by the Greeks to Italian invasion led to the invasion of Greece and Slovania by Germany which in turn delayed Hitler's attack on Russia by three weeks. This in turn led to a delay in reaching Moscow before winter and ultimately to the defeat at Stalingrad.

The German occupation of Northern Norway brought the U-boats one thousand miles closer to the North Atlantic convoy routes. Thousands of seamen lost their lives in the cold waters of the North Atlantic en route to Britain or Murmansk. The German U-boat wolf packs sank three British merchantmen a day on their journey from Iceland to Murmansk. My father was a seaman on an escort sloop: the convoy could not stop and sailors in the water waving for help were left to die. My father said it took only four minutes for them to die in the waters of the Arctic.

British air attacks continued on Narvik. Airmen who crashed usually crashed in West Bothnia in Sweden since Narvik lies only twenty kilometres from the Swedish border. There they were interned in a concentration camp in Lapland at Kusfors. They could see trains crossing the river from the camp. They did not know that these trains carried German troops, artillery and munitions to Narvik and troops southward on leave to Germany. A total of two million German troops were transported through Sweden out of the range of allied planes or ships; actions in clear contravention of the London Agreement. The journey took two days instead of two weeks by boat. When Germany attacked Russia the British prisoners could also see the trains going north which carried the German Engelbreckt division from Southern Norway to Finland, which had a border with Russia.

After Germany attacked Russia in 1941, the Luftwaffe ran nightly patrols from Narvik in a circle over northern Sweden. The RAF had started an air courier service to the Russians at Murmansk using Mosquito planes, the fastest plane then available. They entered Norway between Narvik and Trondheim and then continued across Swedish Lappland to Murmansk. The Russians also asked for Handley Page Hampden torpedo bombers, which they lacked, and thirty-two planes with Australian aircrew left Scotland for Murmansk. Two of these bombers crashed deep in Swedish territory with bullet holes in their propellers. Seven others were lost and have not been found. The Hampden had a blind spot in front of the nose to the side and could be shot down in safety from that angle. The Swedish Defence Staff asked the local Home Guard to collect an item, probably the codebook, from one of the wrecks when the crashed plane was found. The item was most probably passed on to the Germans. A Lancaster Bomber and a Messerschmit 110 have also been found in the vast wilderness of Lappland.

Allied planes that landed in Sweden were impounded and the crews interned. German planes that landed in Sweden were taken apart and sent back to Germany at the expense of the Swedish government. The crews were also sent back to Germany if they so wished.

On the coast to the east at Luleå the Swedes provided an enormous storage depot for the Germans. The Swedes set up the depot on the initiative of the German military attaché, General Bruno von Uthmann. This depot supplied the Germans at Narvik and later on in Finland. It was housed in warehouses owned by Wenner-Gren. A German Wehrmacht Ordnance officer named Walter Zindler, stationed in Luleå ran this. He also supervised the off-loading of German troops from German ships at Luleå, among others the 'Deutschland', and supervised their boarding onto Swedish trains. Each train carried about a thousand troops. These trains went to Narvik until 1941.

Later the trains also took German troops up to the Finnish border for the Petsamo campaign against the Russians. Zindler also arranged for the transport of German troops by Swedish vehicles to the Finnish border. He complained to the high command in Germany that the Swedish company arranging the transport was over-charging and charging fraudulently for transports they had not carried out. The German High Command replied "Give the Swedes what they ask for; it will not be us, but others who will pay these bills in the end".

Zindler has been more forthcoming about his stay in Luleå than the Swedes in the area who have remained silent to this day. This is a good example of the difference between the Germans, who have come to terms with their wartime past, and the Swedes, who have repressed their wartime past in a welter of Utopian materialism. Luleå has to this day been designated a 'military area' where photographs may not be taken by foreigners.

Walter met the telephonist at the County Government Office, Agda Falkbrink, whom he describes as an invaluable source of information, not least concerning himself. Walter always dined at the town's finest hotel, but after finding it expensive he dined at a smaller restaurant where he met and married a Swedish girl called Gunvor Sandberg, from Piteå, forty kilometres away. Since Gunvor's mother had a Biblical name which sounded Jewish to Walter's superior, Walter was forced to obtain the personal permission of the Fürhrer, who, after perusing photographs of the family, proclaimed it to be a fully Arian family. The marriage could proceed.

The Boliden company in West Bothnia produced copper, zinc, lead, silver and gold. They had difficulties in transporting the mined ore from Lapland to the smelter at Boliden. The Germans provided the company with two hundred kilometres of high-quality cable to build the longest cable line in the world. This carried the ore in metal containers hung from the cable to the smelter. Germany provided much of the equipment required for smelting copper and lead. The German Preussag Company had experience of lead smelting which Sweden lacked. All the metals produced were then sold to Germany.

In payment for iron ore, copper, lead, zinc, timber, high quality steel and ball-bearings the Germans supplied consumer products such as cars and radios, coal which was used to run the railways, and diamonds and gold stolen from occupied countries and Jews.

Pilots on German planes that landed could fly back to Germany, though the Swedes kept the planes and pilots of the Allies that landed in Sweden. The Hasselblad camera was developed from a camera found in the wreck of a German reconnaissance plane towards the end of the war. There was no Luftwaffe to challenge Hasselblad's patent when his camera swept the world with 'its' revolutionary technique.

The price of most of Sweden's exports in the early thirties trebled in a couple of years as Germany rearmed. A Swede living near me was asked on the radio about the history of his sawmill. He said his father had a small one-man circular saw in the thirties for sawing railway sleepers. When the price the Germans paid tripled he was soon able to build a sawmill.

The vast profits made by all sectors of the economy led in 1938 to an agreement between the employers and the unions to make wild strikes unlawful in return for a closed shop. The employers knew that as long as they could keep production going they would make money.

The unions and employers were additionally able to make statutory agreements and raise monies on their own without any parliamentary influence. From this point on the unions were the paymasters of the Swedish Socialist party and therefore in practice determined all Swedish policy. This is still the situation. The principle of 'no taxation without representation' is not known to the Swedes.

Goering came to Sweden in the twenties to give a tour of flying exhibitions. My wife's uncle went for a ride with him in his plane, which was called 'Ingrid'. Goering was an opium addict and he stayed in Sweden for two years and underwent treatment for his addiction in Stockholm. He met and married a Swedish countess named Karin, whom he then took to Germany.

It would have been surprising if there had been no political agreement with Germany as well as an economic agreement. Sweden's Trade Council, formed in 1898, was then a quasi-governmental organization that acted in conjunction with the diplomatic corps, as it does today. Sweden's main trading partner was Germany: if a war broke out Germany would be the only trading partner. The King, George V was avidly pro-German and tried to have the government enter the war on Germany's side. The father of the wife of the crown prince was a member of the Nazi party.

The Swedish Secret Police were trained by the Gestapo and maintained contacts with Germany throughout the war. They sent any refugees from Norway that the Gestapo asked for to Germany. Sweden claims that it filled a role as a safe haven for refugees in the war. Those sent to the Gestapo have not lived to contest AB this view. In 1942 a German officer in the Wehrmacht discovered that extermination camps existed in Germany. He gave a report to the Swedish Legation in Germany who sent the report to Sweden. It was passed to the Swedish Gestapo who sent it back to the German Gestapo with the name of the German officer. The Gestapo shot the German officer.

Throughout the war anti-German press was censured. The equivalent of Vera Lynn in Germany was the Swedish singer and actress Zara Leander. Goering was a popular guest in the country, married to a Swede. When the war started, the Swedish army was massed on a line of defence near the Finnish border. This would provide defence in case of a Russian defeat of Finland.

At the beginning of the war the Swedish Prime Minister of the coalition government, Per Albin Hansson, a socialist, said "Our preparations for the war are good". Many assumed he was referring to the Swedish military situation, implying a potential Swedish resistance to attack. However, he could just as well have been referring to the political situation: he began his speech as an analysis of Sweden's chances of staying out of the war. His statement could also be interpreted as "Our preparations for staying out of the war are good". As a former journalist Hansson was well aware of the usefulness of ambiguity.

The Swedish Lutheran Church was an offshoot of the German Lutheran Church. It maintained good relations with Nazi Germany throughout the war, and ran a theological academy at Sonderhausen which was financed by the Nazi state as well as personally by the propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. The Bishop of Uppsala, Bishop Bergman, sent his young son to Germany in the 1930s where he joined the Hitler Youth movement. The spectacle and symbolism of Nazism fascinated the young Ingemar as his films were later to fascinate millions of film buffs with their mysticism.

In Skellefteå plans for building were being made in 1940 and a plan for rebuilding the town on German lines was made in 1941. Since the socialist mayor put Adolf Hitler forward as a candidate for the Nobel Peace prize these town plans are hardly surprising.

In 1940 the Swedish government built a new cemetery outside Stockholm on modern lines called the Wood Cemetary. In the same year the drawings for the Malmö City Theatre, three hundred kilometres from Hamburg, were begun. None of these actions were those of a country that felt it risked going to war.

After the defeat of the Germans at El Alemain and then at Stalingrad the Swedes started to backtrack. They made fewer concessions to the Germans and began supplying the Allies as well as the Germans. They also sent a somewhat reluctant Gunder Hägg to America on a second goodwill athletics tour, the first having been his trip to Germany. Since Americans hardly know where Europe lies, let alone where Sweden lies, Hägg's trip was a triumph. Only he and the Swedes knew he was running the other way round the track this time.

At the end of 1944 it was clear that the Germans would lose the war. The Americans began to worry about what would happen in the countries which would become Communist: the only agreement about what would happen after the war was a division of Europe agreed by Churchill and Stalin on the back of an envelope. The American therefore felt they needed spies in those European countries that might become Communist. The only unequivocal anti-Communists were, unfortunately, the members of the Nazi party. The Americans therefore recruited some Nazis before the end of the war in case a country should become Communist. An example was Italy and the P2 spy group. Hungary was also clearly a country that the Russians were likely to occupy.

Raul Wallenberg worked from 1941 as Overseas Director for a Jew working in Stockholm, Dr Lauer. Raul Wallenberg was a distant member of the Wallenberg banking family who had previously been educated as an architect in America. Raul Wallenberg first went to Budapest, a Nazi capital, on business in 1941.

Dr Lauer had many relatives in Budapest and was becoming increasingly worried about their safety. The Jews in Hungary had as yet not been sent to the extermination camps. The American Legation lay two floors below Dr Lauer in the same building. His secretary has described the many letters she carried up and down the stairs to the American Legation for Dr Lauer. In the autumn of 1944 Wallenberg was sent to the Swedish legation in Budapest. In February 1945 when the war in Europe was clearly almost over Raul Wallenberg was issued with a diplomatic passport by the cabinet, and not by the foreign office. His cabinet passport indicates that the government lay behind his trip and not Dr Lauer or Raul Wallenberg himself. Raul Wallenberg may well have seen his commission as similar to many of the export enterprises he undertook during the war where intrigue was part of trade. The privileged position Swedish citizens found themselves in, particularly those of wealth such as Raul Wallenberg, may also have contributed to his sense of invulnerability. Additionally, the end of the war was considered to be weeks away at that time.

The Swedish legation diplomats in Budapest were on good terms with Adolf Eichmann and the Nazi high command: they dined together once a week. Eichmann's first job with Hitler was trying to find emigration permits for Jews. The Nazis first thought that they could solve what they perceived as the 'Jewish Question' by finding a suitable country where Jews could settle. Brazil was one country considered by the Nazis, Madagascar was another. Eichmann worked for several years on finding emigration permits for Jews in Germany and later in the conquered countries. The fact that Eichmann did not succeed in such an operation led to 'The Final Solution'. This happened when the five million Jews in Poland came under Eichmann's office and attempts to re-settle Jews led to conflicts between various German governmental offices. One example is the office that wished to settle Germans in 'German' parts of Poland which came into conflict with Eichmann's office that wished to find somewhere in Poland to settle Jews. Another example was the Wehmacht that wished to acquire tracts of Poland for Army use.

Wallenberg must have met most of the Nazi officials on his previous trips to Germany over a peiod of three years. Many Nazis were considering their own position after the defeat of Germany. Raul had been empowered by the Swedish Government to issue Swedish papers, a type of visa or passport called a 'safety passport', to any Jew he could find. For Adolf Eichmann Wallenberg's scheme must have appeared to be very much in line with the policy he had spent years trying to implement. Additionally, many Nazis were looking beyond the defeat of Germany and co-operated or turned a blind eye to the issue of the passports. A further factor was that the German command system was rapidly disintegrating and German officers were often in great doubt as to what their orders were at that stage.

Wallenberg's motives for issuing 'safety passports' cannot be known. The danger of this operation has been put forward as a reason for believing that his motives were entirely altruistic. However, at that time a Swedish diplomat stationed in Vienna enjoyed one of the safest jobs in Europe. Millions of allied soldiers and civilians had died and faced death every day. Many allied combatants were engaged in operations where the like expectance was a matter of weeks. It is ahistorical to compare Raul Wallenberg's situation in 1944 with that of a post-war civilian. Compared with the rest of mankind in the world at the time his chances of survival were extremely good. Even Sweden itself risked being overrun by the Russians in 1944. As a businessman and diplomat who had spent the last three years trading with the Nazis Wallenberg must have been on at least the Russian list of potential collaborators who would be killed if the Russians took Sweden. It was, in fact, only the action of a British Colonel who crossed the Elbe 'line' and took Lübeck that saved Scandinavia from falling into Russian hands. In my view, a combination of factors probably led to Wallenberg's issuing 'safety passports', since the Swedes generally operate on a consensus basis where several factors push a decision in a certain direction. The Swedes wished to clean up a pro-Nazi twelve year history. The Americans may have wished to have agents in Vienna after the Russians took over. The Wallenberg family had been the suppliers of arms to the Nazis for twelve years and they may have wished to improve their image now that the Germans had lost the war. Raul Wallenberg is indeed known for saving Jews, not for trading with the Germans for three years, which contributed to the deaths of millions.

The Russians must have been aware that the Swedish Legation in Budapest had been on excellent terms with the Nazis. It is therefore natural that they took Raul Wallenberg into custody, even were they to have discerned that he was not German. Since there were fifteen million refugees in Europe at the end of the war, and since the existence of many countries still in the balance, the fate of one Swedish diplomat must have been a minor matter.

The Russians also were all too aware that there was a steady traffic of German merchant ships through Swedish waters supplying arms to the Germans in Finland. These forces were fighting the Russians. There was still also a Waffen SS Division, 'Viking', manned by Swedish volunteers, which had been fighting on the eastern front for three years. There was also a Swedish Brigade, SS Waffen Nordland, which, after fighting on the eastern front for three years had retreated after receiving orders to defend Hitler's bunker. 'Nordland' had a Swedish guard at Treblinka and probably at several other extermination camps.

The Russians must by then also have been informed by the Americans that Swedish factories in Germany such as the SKF factory at Schweinfurt, a Wallenberg-owned company, had been using Soviet slave labour. Stalin and the Soviet generals in Hungary may well have considered Sweden to be the active collaborator of Nazi Germany that she in fact was: in other words, one of the Axis powers. The imprisonment of a Swedish diplomat, Wallenberg, for questioning would be a quite logical step for the Russians to take.

In the final weeks of the war Norway wished to save as many Norwegians as possible from the extermination camps. Since Norway was officially a German occupied territory the Norwegians asked Sweden if they could arrange an expedition financed by Norway to the camps to save as many Norwegians as possible. Many of these were Norwegians who had opposed the German occupation. The Swedish cover-up was in full swing, and a diplomat, Folke Bernadotte was approached. He agreed to carry out the project which the Norwegians financed. Many Germans were also anxious to appear co-operative and nearly all the Norwegian prisoners still alive were found and taken home. The buses sometimes could not be filled entirely by Norwegians and other nationalities were taken out of Germany. If there were still places on the buses when Dutch, French and British were taken out, then Jews were taken out.

In spite of this action, Swedish ships in German ports in the Baltic in the last few days of the war refused to take on board Jews who had escaped from the camps and who stood on the quayside. These Jews were shot when the SS caught up with them. The SS commandant at Ravensbruk and his wife were taken out by one of the white buses to Sweden. He was given a house to hide and rest-up in, a new identity and funds. He has never been found since.

Immediately after the war Folke Bernadotte wrote a book describing Sweden and himself as the initiators and sole organizers of the thirty-six white bus trips.

The Russians had agreed with Churchill and Truman at Yalta to split Europe on a North-South line running roughly from the Western North German coast to Yugoslavia. The two blocks would then discuss the system for election of governments to be set up in each state as they were brought under Allied control. The line was straight since Eisenhower had always insisted on an advance over a long, straight, broad front, as in the American Civil War, although the British and Montgomery wanted to drive a wedge through the Germans to Berlin. Churchill, however, knew much more about European history and geography than Eisenhower and Truman, and did not trust the Russians. Roosevelt had been more concerned about stopping British colonialism after the war than the fate of Europe, and agreed to most of Stalin's demands. Since the line would leave Denmark to be freed by the Russians the whole of Scandinavia would without doubt have ended up in the Soviet block. Churchill and Eden therefore decided to ignore the American view of the agreement and sent the Second Armoured Division to seize Lübeck east of Denmark, which they achieved on 2 May 1944. The Scandinavians are, therefore, in special debt to the men of this Division, as well as to the rest of the British forces who fought, were wounded or died in defeating Nazi Germany.

Sweden was an easy place for SS men to hide in after the war. Many Swedes have German names, the language is similar and there were many German refugees working in Sweden. Thousands of SS collaborators in the Baltic States fled to Sweden when the Russians approached Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Sweden has today a large community comprised of and descended from these refugees.

No war criminal has ever been interrogated, held or charged in Sweden. The Swedish Government did not introduce special legislation for war criminals, as did every other civilised country in the world. The limitation for prosecution for murder in Sweden is 25 years and after 1965 many self-confessed war criminals have therefore been able to live in security in Sweden. A Swede from the SS Nordland Division was a guard from Treblinka and he has on television admitted to shooting prisoners at that extermination camp and at a labour camp. The Swedish Home Secretary at the time the Treblinka guard was found, Ms Laila Freivalds, refused to change the legislation regarding war criminals. Ms Freivalds was born in Riga in Latvia in 1942. She has based her decision on the principle of no 'post facto' legislation. The Swedish Government has, however, never held to this principle and 'post facto' legislation has been legion since the war.

A recent commission to investigate the presence of Nazi gold in Sweden was able to study the vaults of the Bank of Sweden, but was not able to enter the vaults of the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Trust.

At the end of the war Sweden had enormous reserves, intact industries, forests and farms, and a work force that had trained and gained industrial and commercial experience instead of fighting. All the countries in the world owed Sweden money. In spite of this Sweden managed to obtain a thousand million dollars of Marshall Plan aid. The British were left with a debt of forty thousand million pounds in today's money values to the rest of the world. The Swedes had a balance of payments surplus throughout the thirties. From 1940 to 1945 the Swedish Gold Reserve quadrupled to two thousand million pounds in today's money values.

Sweden's policy and the outcome before, during and after second World War was the same as that of the 1849 German-Danish war, the 1870 Franco-German war, and the 1914-1918 war. Sweden supplied Germany, which averted any threat from Russia. Germany attacked other nations and Sweden profited from being the ordnance supplier for these attacks; and indeed sometimes of the defences from attack.

What did Sweden do with the money? First, starting peace organisations manned by Swedes in every international organization they could finance strengthened the cover-up.

Then they all bought a car and toured Europe. In effect, the Socialist Party gave every Swede a new car, a new flat, a pension, a new hospital, a new school, free indoor tennis courts, free indoor swimming pools, free dance halls and a country cottage. Every farmer received a guaranteed annual income whatever the farm produced. The cars initially came from Britain in the shape of Austins, Morris Minors and Fords. Even 3500 Chevrolets were imported from the USA in 1954. When a British Major set up the VW works again many VWs were exported to Sweden: over eleven thousand Volkswagens were imported in 1954. In 1954 126000 cars were purchased in a country the size of Manchester. Over 20000 Volvos were sold that year.

A book about a little girl who lived in a large house outside town swept the land and allowed every Swede the opportunity to funnel their guilt into an acceptable channel. The little girl wore strange clothes of her own choosing although she was only a child. Her pigtails made her look like a fraulein, but she had such a disarming smile and such a mishmash of clothes that no one asked her where she came from originally. She lived with a monkey called Mr. Carlsson who sat on her shoulder when she went out. The little girl had enormous strength, she could even lift her horse, which amazed everyone. She had enormous wealth, a chest full of gold left to her by her mysterious father who was King of an island in the South Seas. She could even give her friends anything they wanted. She could make up any story she wanted without batting an eyelid. She did what she wanted, such as sleeping with her long boots on the pillow, saying she had been all over the world and that was how they did it in China. An earnest lady social worker tried to have her taken to an orphanage, but the little girl always outwitted her. She always got the better of two thieves who tried to steal her gold. She could even outwit the police. What amazed the village most of all was that she didn't seem to need help from anyone because she was the strongest person in the world, even just a bit stronger than her father.

In 1945 the Swedish economy required unlimited numbers of workers. Most were recruited from Finland and further mass recruitment was carried out from southern Europe. Thousands of Germans also entered the Swedish labour market. This labour was recruited on a "guest worker" system. The compulsory pension contributions deducted from foreign workers pay was only to be paid out as a pension if the worker was resident in Sweden when he or she was 65; this was seldom the case since most "guest workers" returned home as soon as they could. For thirty years foreign workers thus financed the state Swedish pensions system while receiving nothing.

The guest worker provided about twelve times the economic value-added of the Swedish worker: he was educated and trained by another country; he had no family, he was housed in cheap barracks near the factory, he had no dependents in Sweden, he was fit and no burden on the health sector. He knew little and was never informed of the benefits available to him, neither he nor his children utilised the education sector, his work provided supervisory positions filled by Swedes, and his pension contributions were in practice immediately given to Swedish old age pensioners. The guest worker was forced to join the union and pay dues; however, he was never active within the union and merely provided an addition to the union treasury and the block vote at the Socialist Party conference each year.

The unions operated a cell system where union officials reported on every turner and carpenter up to the Socialist Party Secretary. This was carried out by a new secret police system called I.B., probably created because the Swedish Gestapo feared that the risks of detection were so great from a spying organisation with such large membership that they might compromise their own activities. The main target was communists or anti-union workers. The Swedish Gestapo then received information concerning non-conformist workers who were then debarred from work in the public defence sector. Since this sector comprised about 30% of the economy and included such institutions as the Maritime Museum, this was, and still is, a vicious punishment for dissension. The worker does not know the Swedish Gestapo lists him or her: they merely find that they cannot obtain employment by the state. Since foreign workers were unlikely to be reliable informants they were never elected to positions in their union.

After twenty years "guest workers" had learned Swedish, married Swedes or countrymen, began to utilise the facilities of the welfare state, enter the housing market and demand equal rights. The Swedish unions also saw their power in negotiations with Employers being weakened as the employers looked for workers in countries outside Europe. There was still a desperate shortage of workers caused by high demand from both the domestic and export markets. On the ingenuous pretext that there was a shortage of housing the unions demanded a cessation of non-Scandinavian labour immigration. They said that the labour shortage could be supplied by Swedish handicapped persons, Swedish women and Swedish persons who were not in the labour market due to health problems, alcoholism or lack of any education.

The Socialist Government accepted this racist motivation for work apartheid. One of the excuses put forward by a Socialist MP for such a policy was that the exclusion of foreign workers would release housing for increased immigration of refugees. In the fifties and sixties the odd poet from Russia or socialist opposition politician from the third world had managed to reach Sweden and these had provided good publicity and a welcome distraction from the latent threat of the exposure of Sweden's nazi past.

In fact the average number of Swedes travelling abroad to work after the war far exceeded the number of non-Scandinavians entering Sweden to work. About five thousand foreigners entered Sweden to work each year. About twenty thousand Swedes left Sweden to work overseas; some sought work themselves, mostly in the USA, many worked in Swedish companies abroad in the hundreds of subsidiaries set up by such companies as Volvo, SKF and Atlas Copco. The hundreds of international agencies that sprang up after the war were full of Swedes, partly because Sweden had the funds to finance all manners of such organisations. The Swedish population of London alone is five times that of the British population of the whole of Sweden.

Au pair girls were not required to inform the Swedish census if they took up an au pair position abroad and they did not therefore appear in any statistics. However, about fifty thousand girls a year left Sweden for au pair positions as they still do. Sweden has never signed the European au pair convention and no au pair has ever been allowed to work in Sweden. Many Swedish au pairs married or obtained work while they were abroad.

Magazines for teenagers are full of ideas for getting round the US immigration laws. "Take a pair of old skis and say you are going for a skiing holiday." Girls are encouraged to "give the customs man your best smile, they are easily fooled by blondes". No US citizen is allowed to enter Sweden to work, or to take up an au pair position since no such position is recognized.

The effect of this situation was and is that Swedes have grown up since the war with a subconscious, deeply held belief that there is one law for the Swedes and one law for everyone else.

Following the unions' demand the 1968 Act 142 was passed disallowing any non-Scandinavian entry to Sweden to work. For twenty-seven years no non-Scandinavians have entered the Swedish labour market until Sweden joined the EEA when entry of EU nationals could not be stopped, even though Sweden has continued to effect laws that discriminate EU nationals.

In essence, the housing that was then occupied by foreign workers in Germany, France and Britain who would have otherwise worked in Sweden was not available to Germans, Frenchmen and Britons. In addition, Swedes also occupied housing in these countries. The burden of Sweden's housing shortage was in effect born by all other European countries. Sweden's asylum policy has therefore long ago been paid for by Europe in the form of increased housing cost levels. Any refugee entering Sweden should therefore be provided with every advantage since it is Europeans that have made housing available to him or her and not the Swedes.

In fact Sweden was taken by surprise when long-distance air travel led to refugees from all over the world arriving at her doorstep. Sweden always states the figures for entries of refugees when accounting for the numbers the country accepts. In fact, most refugees are sent back to the last country of call: the figure for the issue of resident permits to refugees is about 2000 per year, which makes Sweden the country that accepts fewest refugees in the world. This is achieved in practice by the use of the visa: as soon as refugees start leaving any country the Swedish Government issues an entry requirement in the form of a visa from that country before the refugee leaves that country. Since the situation of the refugee is almost by definition a person that cannot obtain papers from his country's government the requirement of a visa before entry is the most cynical method conceivable to refuse entry to refugees. Sweden has applied this method to refugees from the former Yugoslavia. A couple of decades ago refugees from East Germany were stopped after a visit to East Germany. The Weapons Export Inspector mysteriously finished up under a tube train. Secret trains ran ammunition to East Germany from the Nitro Nobel Explosives company.

 

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