Feature: Scandinavia - Sweden
King Gustaf V of Sweden
Paranoia in the North
In contrast to Norway, and to an extent Denmark, Sweden had been undergoing significant industrial development since the 1870s, initially oriented towards international markets but increasingly with an additional eye towards the growing demands of the increasingly prosperous home market. Sweden saw the development of railroads already in the 1860s, and was an eager adopter of the railroad, such that by the 1900s the country had by and large been tied together, with only the Inland Line connecting the central parts of northern Sweden still under development. Swedish industrial development centered predominantly on large and highly international corporations, tied inextricably to the global markets and prominent feature players in European economic landscape. The early 20th century would see the further rise of a string of broad export-oriented engineering corporations such as the telecommunications company Stockholms Allmänna Telefonaktiebolag, later to be known by its founder's name of Ericsson, the electrical company ASEA, the engineering company AB Separator, the ball bearing corporation SKF or the automobile company Volvo (1).
The pre-Great War period more generally was marked by remarkable economic, political and social progress, with an extension of the franchise to universal manhood suffrage and proportional representation in both houses of government achieved by 1907 alongside an extensive series of social reforms, a massive improvement in health, fueled in part by the introduction of compulsory gymnastics in Swedish schools in 1880, and a remarkable degree of political stability and coalition rule. This period would also see a significant strengthening of the Swedish Army in response to growing international tensions and the adoption of increasingly protectionist trade policies in an effort to protect the powerful small-holder population of Sweden. During the early 20th century, the sympathies of the Swedish monarchy and military were widely believed to rest with the Germans, partly for cultural reasons and partially out of fear of the Russian Empire. It came so far that in 1904, during the Russo-Japanese War, King Oscar II of Sweden even considered an offensive alliance with the Ottomans to exploit the situation, and in 1910 the general staffs of Germany and Sweden met in secret to discuss plans for a joint offensive against Saint Petersburg, although this meeting ended without a binding agreement. This affinity with Germany extended into the ranks of the social-democratic politicians, with many viewing Germany's social security system, industrial and scientific achievements and the German left-wing ideologues as inspirational. However, as the Great War neared, Sweden found itself not under the control of its Germanophile left-wing or monarchist elements, but rather under the pacifist and pro-neutral Liberals of Karl Staaf (2).
In the immediate leadup to the great war, the liberal government of Karl Staff tried to reduce military spending and attempted the cancellation of an order for coastal defence ships. In response, more than 30,000 Swedish farmers descended on Stockholm to protest the matter. In response to the protests, King Gustaf V gave a speech prepared by the pro-German explorer Sven Hedin in the courtyard of the Royal Palace in Stockholm, sympathizing with the peasants' cause and arguing for higher military spending. This speech prompted intense recriminations and a constitutional crisis over the crown's involvement in governmental affairs, as the liberal government sought to silence the monarch. However, King Gustaf refused to back down and continued to hammer the importance of defense spending, culminating in Karl Staff and his government's resignation in protest. This played well into the hands of the King, who soon championed the ascension of a conservative government under Hjalmar Hammarskjöld, just in time for the July Crisis and subsequent Great War (3).
While strongly pro-German at the start of the war, Sweden continued to maintain the neutrality it had professed since the Vienna Congress and remained outside the war. In early 1915, Arthur Zimmermann, Undersecretary of State at the German Foreign Ministry at the time, approached Hammarskjöld while he was on a visit in Berlin with an offer of forming a "Nordic Block" under Swedish leadership in return for a Swedish-German alliance. While this offer was rebuffed, Zimmermann soon followed up with an offer of a renewed Swedish Empire including Finland and the Baltic Provinces of the Russian Empire. However, while King Gustaf expressed his interest, the matter was largely frowned upon by the political leadership. Successive efforts at recruiting Sweden for the German war effort would follow throughout the year, both from a royalist and leftist approach without success. Notably this period saw Swedish exports to Germany massively expand, including numerous critical military resources which did wonders for the German ability to resist the ongoing Entente blockade. Sweden would even give the Germans use of their diplomatic communications pathways, allowing the Germans to communicate with their embassies around the world. While the Germans attempted to pressure the Swedes into mining their side of the Danish straits at the start of the war, as they had with the Danes, this efforts ultimately failed in the face of stiff Swedish opposition and the Germans relented in return for a promise that Swedish lighthouses in the Øresund would be switched off and markers showing the way through the channel would be removed if the Royal Navy entered the Sound. However, following a series of British infiltrations of the Baltic which successfully sank German merchant shipping and an armored cruiser, the Germans renewed their pressure on the Swedes, ultimately leading to the mining of the Kogrund Channel though the Øresund straits in late July 1916 (4).
The mining of the channel drew sharp criticism from the Entente, but despite this both Germany and Britain remained highly reliant on Swedish iron ore for their military needs - the British importing a total of 5-600,000 tons annually during the war, when the entire British national stock of iron ore in June of 1916 had reached 253,000 tons. Both Britain and Germany needed Swedish iron to forge their arms of war. Nevertheless, Sweden found itself increasingly pressured by the food shortages caused by the Allied blockade on imports and, when combined with a poor 1916 harvest, the Swedish government began to ration bread, sugar and flour in early 1917. With the American entry into the war, the ability of the Swedes to dictate the terms of their trade shrank as American coal and steel began to fill the gap, and the Allies were now able to present a request to the Swedes for a reduction in iron ore exports to Germany in return for increased food supplies from the Germans. Despite the food shortages, however, Hammarskjöld remained resistant to such an agreement, fearing that the Germans would see such a matter as them favoring the Allies. Greatly angered, the Allies strengthened the blockade further in an attempt to force the Swedes into compliance with their blockade, even as Swedish ships found themselves increasingly in the sights of German U-boats for their British trade (4).
As the situation worsened and Hammarskjöld remained steadfast in his refusal to cooperate with the Entente, his own allies in the Swedish parliament began to turn against him. In early 1917 this would culminate in public protests over food shortages, the failure of the Riksdag to approve increased defence spending and a revolt from Hammarskjöld's own supporters, forcing Hammarskjöld's resignation. To succeed him, King Gustaf turned to the conservative Ernst Trygger to form a government, but when he failed to find sufficient backing in the Riksdag, it became the turn of the equally conservative Carl Swartz to make his go at leadership by March of 1917. However, Swartz was equally unable to handle the situation, which rapidly escalated in response to harsh policing of the "hunger marches", even as the food situation in Sweden worsened and the government was forced to extend rationing to include even potatoes. As order began to break down, the conflict neared its climax in early June of 1917 when 20,000 people assembled near the Riksdag in Stockholm to hear Carl Swartz reply to Hjalmar Branting's demand for universal suffrage and constitutional reform were dispersed by mounted police. However, Swartz's actions would prove a step too much and in the September elections of that year he would find himself unseated in favor of the Liberal government of Nils Edén. With Social Democratic backing, Edén pressed forward with the demands for reform, including the 9-hour work day, improved living conditions, social reforms and an acquiescence to the Entente's demands for a significant reduction in trade with the Germans, to the open outrage of King Gustaf and the conservatives (4).
The turn against the Germans could hardly have come at a worse time, as the German U-boats increased their activity in the North Sea, reaping large numbers of Swedish merchant ships in the process, even as the Finns began to break away from their Russian overlords. With the Germans peeved at the Swedish "betrayal" and the war seeming to turn in their favor in the east, the Germans threw their full support behind the claims from Finnish Whites, that the Åland Islands rightly belonged to the Grand Duchy of Finland and aided in the transfer of White Finn troops to the island, where they expelled the Russian garrison following a short standoff. Outraged at the occupation of the islands by German and Finn forces, the Swedish government lodged protests with the government in Berlin while Gustaf publicly blamed the new Edén government for their failure to capitalize on the situation. When the young state of Finland subsequently collapsed into civil war between White and Red factions, the official Swedish aid to the Whites proved extremely limited as a result, although a significant contingent of Swedes did volunteer for service with the White forces under the direction of the Finland Vänner organization. Most significant of these volunteers would be the historian Olof Palme, who would subsequently publish a deeply scathing history of the war, in which he lambasted the Liberal government's failure to aid their Finnish cousins (5).
First of May Protests in 1917
The cumulative failures of the liberal government, first turning against the Germans, then failing to secure the Åland Islands and finally their unwillingness to actively aid the White Finn effort in that country's civil war were to send shockwaves through Swedish politics and enliven the conservative opposition. At the same time, Hjalmar Branting, who lead the Swedish Social Democratic Party and had provided backing for Nils Edén's Liberal government grew hesitant at the prospect of being dragged into the same political mire as the Liberals. This breach came at a deeply inopportune moment, for Branting and Edén had been working towards securing a firm end to royal power in Sweden and a transition to full parliamentary democracy under universal suffrage. Thus Sweden found itself in the grip of two simultaneous but fundamentally opposed forces. Reform and Reaction (6).
While 1918 was marked foremost by the Russian unravelling and the failures of Finnish adventure, by the end of the year the government had turned its attentions fully towards securing universal suffrage. A key factor in this was undoubtedly the Russian Revolution and the galvanizing effect the events of 1917 had held for the Swedish masses, with particularly the Social Democrats pressing forward, dragging the Liberals along under threat of popular unrest. Given the already fragile political state of Sweden, and the still ongoing wartime deprivations, the fear that the Social Democrats would turn towards more radical revolutionary action impelled Edén towards concessions. By the calling of the 1919 Riksdag, all the fundamental pieces had been aligned for a radical package of political and social reforms (6).
Firstly, the new bill would abolish the political tax line, which limited voting to tax-paying males, and extended the right to vote to women. It further reformed the system of poorhouses, poor auctions and child auctions which had long been used as a remedy to poverty in Sweden, established an 8-hour working day and reduced the training time of conscripts. All of these efforts ultimately passed with the backing of the Social Democrats, Liberals and a couple minor parties. A major reshuffling of the ministerial structures followed while school boards were formed uniting all educational institutions below the university level and a new sliding tax scale on income and wealth tax adjusted yearly was introduced. There was, however, one major area which the right-wing had succeeded in stemming the reformers on. Control over Sweden's foreign policy had largely been kept in the hands of royal appointees during the preceding decade, and at this point the reformers had attempted to end this last major bastion of royal power. However, with the successive foreign policy failures of the government, the conservatives were able to muster a rear-guard action and ultimately retained this power in royal hands (6).
Even as the negotiations for the end of the Great War were coming about in Copenhagen, in Sweden preparations for the first election under universal suffrage were set to begin in early 1920. On the conservative side it would be between the more moderate Arvid Lindman, who had already been a prominent figure on the right and served as prime minister once between 1906 and 1911, and the hardline conservative Ernst Trygger, who had already been sidestepped once in favor of Swartz. However, 1920 was not 1917 and Trygger found himself more than vindicated in his positions. A staunchly monarchist voice who had loudly decried the government's failures to intervene in Finland, Trygger was able to present himself as the powerful leader necessary to tackling the seeming threatened collapse of Swedish society and ultimately emerged victorious in the struggle with Lindman. With King Gustaf's full backing, Trygger set about fiercely denouncing the liberal government as little better than stooges of the Social Democrats, who he equally painted as possessing a dangerously revolutionary spirit - a conviction further strengthened by the large number of pro-Socialist voices in the party (7).
This characterization was somewhat unfair, for the Swedish Social Democratic Party was itself bitterly split over the question of Revolutionary Socialism as promoted by the Red factions of Russia's civil war. At varying points it seemed as though the party itself was on the verge of splintering, but by the time of the 1920 elections the party remained united. Thus, entering the 1920 elections the situation looked particularly dire for the Liberals, who were increasingly seen as subordinate to the Social Democrats, while the conservative Electoral League looked set to experience significant forward progress. All that remained was whether the Conservatives would be able to match the Social Democrats, who all expected to secure the greatest margin of votes. The results were to prove a surprise nonetheless, while the Liberals lost seats and the Electoral League won them, the elections were to see a key shift in the Liberal party as Edén was toppled from leadership in favor of the former farmhand and fierce prohibitionist Carl Gustaf Ekman. Ekman had long been viewed as something amounting to a "class traitor" by the Social Democrats for his policies and when he led the Liberals into coalition with the archconservative Trygger this only seemed further proven. In return for Conservative support for prohibition, Ekman essentially turned entirely to support of the conservative government. Ernst Trygger was to be the next Prime Minister of Sweden, the first so elected under universal suffrage - a fact the Conservatives would not be slow to remind the Social Democrats of in the years that followed (7).
Ernst Trygger, Prime Minister of Sweden from 1920 to 1933
Trygger's rise to power was to mark the beginnings of a period of significant political tensions within and between the political camps in Sweden. During this period each of the political parties in Sweden experienced turmoil and uncertainty in turn. The first party to find itself engulfed in an internal crisis were the Liberals, who split both over Ekman's alliance with Trygger and the issue of prohibition, which the Liberals had not even been in agreement on when Ekman announced his support for the conservative government. Divided over the issues of prohibition and political alignment with the conservatives, the party eventually broke into two with Ekman leading the "Free-Spirited People's Party" while his scattering of opponents sought unity under the Liberal Party banner, but soon they found themselves so enmeshed in internal strife that this successor party had fractured by 1922, ending any meaningful Liberal alternative to Ekman. With Ekman firmly in control and Trygger supportive of it, the Swedish government soon set to work on a slate of alcohol prohibition bills which would secure passage in late 1921 and early 1922 (8).
For the Swedish left-wing, the rise of Trygger's government was met with intense worry and fierce resistance. Labor unrest and protests broke out with incredible regularity, at times even matching the intensity of strikes in Norway during this period, with many accusing the Social Democrats of misusing their influence on labor unions to enflame social tensions. However, in contrast to the Norwegian decision to compromise, in Sweden Trygger proved determined to face the resistance head on and over the course of the next several years he found himself pressed to the very edge of forceful suppression, though this was avoided through sheer luck and restraint on both sides - with Hjalmar Branting proving an absolutely invaluable voice in calming his Social Democratic colleagues and maintaining national order. However, this very centrality of Branting to the maintenance of peace and order was to prove short lived, for the famous old politician who had shepherded the Social Democrats to political relevance would breath his last in February of 1925, setting the stage for what would turn out to be an astonishingly vicious leadership struggle within the party. Long split between moderates, who had held the upper hand under Branting, and its radical wing, who drew inspiration from the achievements of the Communists in Moscow and the Norwegian Arbeiderparti and wanted to take a more aggressive line against the government (9).
At the heart of this struggle were the moderate Per Albin Hansson and the radical Zeth Höglund. Hansson was very much the protégé and successor to Branting, having succeeded him as editor of Social-Demokraten and worked alongside him in the days of the suffrage reforms - while a decently well-liked politician, he was popular more for his relationship to Branting than in his own right. For Höglund it was the exact opposite. One of Sweden's most prominent anti-war activists and a prominent figure in the pre-war international socialist movement, Höglund had spent much of the war imprisoned for his anti-war endeavors and had close personal friendships with many of the leading pre-war Bolsheviks - famously having donated money to a struggling Bolshevik cause before the start of the war. Since his release from prison in 1918, Höglund had been following events in Russia closely, at times with joy, at others with horror, but always with sympathy for the Communist cause. Agitating against the Social Democratic Party's reformist policies, Zeth had built a sizable following within the party, and had become particularly popular with its younger members. At varying points he had very nearly broken with the party, but following correspondence with Bukharin and other leading Muscovite leaders he had sought to exert change from within the party, and with Branting's death he finally saw his chance to bring properly revolutionary ideals to the party (9).
The conflict over leadership of the Social Democrats was more wide-reaching than just determining the policy alignment of the party - it was closely followed by the Trygger Government and the Swedish right-wing more generally with great interest and worry. Should Hansson win, many believed that Sweden would enter a path similar to that of Germany - the Social Democrats becoming part of and eventually dominating the political main stream through compromise and electoral weight of numbers. However, if Höglund were to take leadership many feared that he would use his sway over what was growing to be Sweden's largest party to launch a Communist Revolution, inspired by his Bolshevik comrades of yesteryear. This was a fear which saturated the right-wing of Swedish society, and became a point of considerable rhetorical weight, and a fear which began to spill into the right-wing of the Social Democrats as well. Höglund's open radicalism made him popular, yes, but it also made him feared and when the party conference to select the next Social Democratic leader came that was to prove the thrust of Hansson and his supporters' arguments. By contrast, Höglund would focus his arguments on what he called the "spinelessness" of the current Social Democratic leadership and the need to demonstrate the power of Labor in Sweden if they were to ever have a hope of improving the lives and working conditions for Sweden's laboring classes. A gifted speaker with considerable personal appeal, when Höglund was set side-by-side with the far less flamboyant Hansson, the contrast could not have been starker. Cheered by the younger ranks of the party and having swayed the body of the party, Zeth Höglund was selected to lead the party into the future to the considerable frustration of the moderate leadership, who saw themselves undercut from the left (9).
Höglund's rise to leadership was an added weight to an already troubled Trygger Government, who found themselves increasingly worried about their geopolitical position. The latter half of the 1920s would see a growing sense of envelopment and encroachment by left-wing forces spread through Swedish society, enflaming right-wing sentiments and promoting a sense of paranoid fear of a coordinated left-wing threat from both foreign and domestic enemies. Most worrying were obviously the Soviet Republic, which had finally secured firm control of the entirety of its Russian possessions by the end of the decade with the Siberian Conquest, but the rise of Arbeiderpartiet in Norway, Stauning's Socialdemokrater in Denmark and the SPD in Germany all added to Sweden's national security fears. In response to these pressures, Trygger's government turned to their Finnish neighbors in search of allies in these dark and fearful times, with foreign minister Baron Erik Marks von Württemberg negotiating a string of diplomatic agreements with the government in Finland, culminating in the signing of a military alliance in 1931. Additional entreaties would be made to the governments of Britain and France in the Swedish search for allies with less success, before Swedish diplomats began to report back on the developments in Iberia, where Integralist states were rising to prominence. While unable to build direct ties to these states, they were to prove an intellectual inspiration for many on the Swedish right-wing, who feared the rising left-wing and felt the need for a reactionary alternative (10).
By the start of the 1930s, various political developments and social currents were coming to a head and Trygger's long leadership of Sweden was nearing its end. During the preceding decade, a rising reactionary current had been shielded by the Prime Minister from scrutiny, and as the Swedish labor movement under Höglund grew ever more active, these efforts came into play. A key player in this was the historian-turned-professor-turned-politician Olof Palme, who had secured nation-wide fame for his participation in the Finnish Civil War and his subsequent lambasting of the Edén government. An intensely gifted writer and thinker, Palme returned to a professorship at Uppsala University and began to formulate and promulgate what would in time come to be seen as the Swedish counterpart to the Latin Integralist movement shortly after the end of his time as a volunteer in Finland - the New Sweden Movement had been born. Working in concert with young and eager students such as Per Engdahl and Bengt Petri, they developed an ideological framework based around Swedish ultra-nationalism, Integralist corporatism and fiercely anti-socialist. In time this expanded to include elements of Nordic agrarian policies, in an effort to appeal to the already receptive Peasants' Party, and overt monarchism. As a prominent public figure, Palme was able to meet and influence many prominent figures and in 1929 was able to secure election to the Riksdag as a member of the Electoral League alongside Fritiof Domö and Martin Skoglund, the former bringing industrial ties and the latter a direct connection to the peasantry. It would be this trio, Palme, Domö and Skoglund, who rapidly ascended to lead a massive and growing faction within the ruling party as events in Sweden grew ever more tense (11).
Following Höglund's selection to lead the Social Democrats, the state of labor in Sweden had become one of near-unceasing unrest. Strikes, lockouts and protests were a nation-wide and monthly phenomenon which provoked fear and anger in conservative ranks. Fearful of what this internal enemy might do if urged on by their international allies, Lieutenant General Bror Munck began to form a volunteer free corps, known as Munckska Kåren, with the explicit purpose of protecting Sweden from a potential Communist takeover. Not only did the Munck Corps receive the tacit support of the Conservative government, but figures such as Palme and Konrad Hallgren, who were leaders of the Swedish Far-Right. Training proceeded apace and weaponry was secured from Stockholm Chief of Police Gustaf Hårleman - numbering in the hundreds of rifles, pistols and cartridges, as well as a full 40 machine guns. Underground, training and armed, the Corps remained a force hidden but ready for action should it be needed. A second major force in the events to come lay with the businessman Ivar Kreuger. A massively successful businessman of right-wing beliefs, Kreuger played a key role in financing and developing not just the Munck Corps, but various other right-wing organizations and movements in preparation for a Communist revolt. (11).
Everything came to a head with the assassination of Prime Minister Ernst Trygger in early 1933. Gunned down by masked men as he was arriving at the Chancellery building at Mynttorget in the February darkness, the shock of the long-sitting Prime Minister's death and the disappearance of his killers could not have been greater. As word of the Prime Minister's assassination spread, horror and outrage soon followed. In the morning session at the Riksdag, Olof Palme rose and accused the Social Democrats of being responsible, while right-wing newspapers across Sweden blared that the Prime Minister had been murdered by Communists. Still struggling to determine what had happened, King Gustaf erupted with rage at the murder of his close personal friend and long-time confidant. Unsure of who could be trusted to maintain the interim government while the next Prime Minister was selected, the King ultimately settled on recalling the long-retired Arvid Lindman to take office. However, before Lindman could even arrive in Stockholm, the situation had further escalated when an ongoing strike in Södermalm turned violent and half a dozen protesters and a pair of policemen were left dead in the aftermath (12).
Tensions ratcheted up another notch, as right-wing papers cried out that the Communists were coming, while the left-wing press screamed that it was all a cruel set-up and some papers even called for a general strike to demonstrate the power of worker solidarity in the face of right-wing tyranny, though Social Democratic party leaders hesitated from joining these calls. Nevertheless, all the Munck Corps needed to jump was the fear that action was coming under way. Called up by Lieutenant General Munck, the Free Corps emerged from hiding and rushed to secure control of key sectors of Stockholm in the early morning of the 19th of February, aided by complicit police forces and right-wing sympathizers in the government. The coup occurred with such a speed that few had even realized what was going on before they had fallen into the Munck Corps' hands. Höglund, Hansson and most of the rest of the Social Democratic leadership were caught either as they arrived at the Riksdag or still abed at home, while Olof Palme joined Lieutenant General Bror Munck in marching for the Royal Palace to present King Gustaf with their version of events and to ask for his blessing for their actions. A disorganized attempted rising by the inhabitants of Södermalm was dispersed by warning shots while another attempted protest in the Old City saw most of the participants arrested by police. As though a sudden ripple had torn across the city and then disappeared, the coup came and passed, the far-right quite abruptly in control (12).
With Stockholm in hand, and King Gustaf giving his hesitant backing to the coup-makers, order was soon restored and control extended across the rest of Sweden. In Norrköping, one of the largest industrial cities in northern Europe, a general strike was declared by the local trade unions and calls for the formation of Red Guard regiments went out, but with royal blessing the Swedish Army was sent in to quell the unrest, arresting any who protested and dispersing a crowd of angry protestors at the Motala Verkstad, with similar actions occurring at Göteborg and Malmö. Despite the large and widespread left-wing movement in Sweden, leaderless, confused, surprised and faced with the threat of military force, the laboring classes surrendered without much of a fight. In a proclamation by the coup leaders, the Social Democratic Party was outlawed alongside any and all other left-wing parties, organizations and institutions, with trade unions urged to immediately take contact with government offices to arrange for the transition to an "unideological" basis of existence. New elections were announced, but instead of Lindman as care-taker, King Gustaf now announced that it would be undertaken under the guidance of Lieutenant General Bror Munck (12).
The elections, however, would have to wait for now. With Munck now named as interim Prime Minister, the coup makers set about purging the Swedish Left. A massive crackdown saw hundreds imprisoned and several thousand more flee across the border to Norway, where they found themselves welcomed by a confused but concerned Norwegian Arbeiderparti, already embattled and struggling to deal with their own right-wing opposition. This was also a time of incredible change at the political level in Sweden, for with Trygger's death, leadership of his party and the wider political consensus of the pre-coup status quo had been utterly shattered. Olof Palme and his allies, who were rising with unheard speed to the top of Swedish politics, finally broke with the old structures and declared the formation of the New Swedish People's Party (Nysvenska Folkpartiet), which they claimed would serve as the vehicle for Sweden's transformation into a power capable of resisting the insidiousness of the Communist, Socialist and Foreigner. Support for the new party was overwhelming, drawing in near two-thirds of the Electoral League, half of the Peasants Party's membership and a good quarter of the Free-Spirited People's Party. To counter the rise of the NSPP, members of the Electoral League and Free-Spirited People's Party united to form the Liberal-Conservative Party, uniting social conservatism with liberal economic policies, decrying the Munck Coup and calling for a return to "Swedish Democracy". Finally, realizing that they would need to adapt or die after the NSPP undercut their agrarian primacy, the Peasant's Party under Axel Alarik Pehrsson-Bramstorp adopted the name of Christian Solidarity, merging their agrarian policies with principles of Christian Solidarity, effectively advocating a wide range of social reforms aimed at coopting the former voting base of the Social Democrats, but shielding it under a layer of religious social policies. Thus reforged, the Swedish political spectrum now housed three main parties, the New Swedish People's Party on the right, the Liberal-Conservative Party in the center and the Christian Solidarity on the left (13).
As the turmoil gripping Sweden came to an end in early Summer, work on the elections came under way, culminating in the Swedish Elections of August 1933. Surprising many, Lieutenant General Munck had refrained from standing for election, and instead announced that he would be returning to military service following the elections. Thus it became a race between Olof Palme, Axel Pehrsson-Bramstorp and Gösta Bagge, the leader of the Liberal-Conservatives, and to the surprise of almost no-one, Palme and his New Swedish People's Party secured a massive victory. With the groundwork laid in the months after the coup, Palme and his supporters were able to pave the way for their rise to the top, and thus it was that the one-time volunteer in Finland's Civil War rose to the post of Prime Minister of Sweden. Palme would spend his first few years consolidating his hold on power and setting in motion a swarm of social, political and military reforms aimed at preparing Sweden should they find themselves attacked by their left-wing neighbors. However, foreign news was soon to prove this paranoia overblown, when first the Norwegian Tranmæl Government fell, then Thorvald Stauning was gunned down in Copenhagen, an eerie reminder of what had happened to Trygge which would draw in conspiracy theorists for decades to follow, and finally the German outcry at the Krivitsky Case saw Sweden's encirclement swept away in a bare couple years. Diplomatic efforts at reconnecting with Sweden's "liberated" neighbors soon followed, met with bemused interest by the Germans and Danes, though less welcomed in Norway, which still housed many Swedish left-wing exiles (13).
Footnotes:
(1) Sweden's industrial development was a lot more "normal" in a lot of ways than that of Denmark or Norway - large corporations wielding economies of scale and their vast natural resources to fighting on an even footing with other European corporate monsters. I think it might have to do a bit with Sweden's geography as well, with the country only really suited for largescale settlement in specific small areas, so you get these large industrial corridors near Stockholm, Malmö or Göteborg which see industrial specialization and intensive settlement, while vast tracts of land are left sparsely populated by small resource-extraction oriented mining or lumber towns and small-holder peasant settlements.
(2) More setup of OTL. Much as it pains me as a Dane, the Swedes had a pretty good setup going pre-Great War and were implementing a lot of meaningful reforms. In fact, as we will see, their main issue probably lay in the monarchy and military's efforts at circumventing the parliamentary system.
(3) This is known as the Courtyard Crisis. While Hammarskjöld was appointed as Prime Minister, debate over the issue of defense spending and particularly the King's role in Swedish politics remained a subject of intense debate right up until Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo.
(4) All OTL. I am going into detail with Sweden's Great War experience because it is here our PoD will strike. One thing I have found rather fascinating as I have dug into the Scandinavian experience of the Great War is how much the countries were impacted and pressured despite their neutrality.
(5) Here we get the first major butterfly. While the Swedes ended trade with Germany IOTL as well, here the changed circumstances on the Eastern Front result in the Germans being more willing to be standoffish with their Swedish counterparts and, instead of supporting Swedish claims to the Ã…land Islands and aiding in their occupation, the Germans instead use this opportunity to strengthen their ties with the Finns, allowing them to lead the occupation of the islands. This in turn leads to a significantly reduced official backing of the Whites during the Civil War, although the private support does happen as per OTL, and the Swedish government ends up looking incredibly bad coming out of this. An initially minor butterfly of all this is that Olof Palme, who IOTL was the first Swedish casualty of the war, survives and makes it home to continue writing right-wing historical polemics - he also happens to be the uncle and namesake of Olof Palme, the Swedish prime minister who was murdered in 1986 IOTL.
(6) Compared to OTL, Sweden's transition towards parliamentary democracy is proving a lot more fraught and combative. Rather than spelling the final end of Royal Power, this period ends up becoming one of intense political division and partisanship as the conservatives mount a comeback over the Liberal-Social Democratic handling of the Great War. Many of the reforms are based on OTL, but ITTL the government failed to secure complete control of foreign policy and are unable to quite suppress the monarchical powers in the way they did IOTL.
(7) IOTL Trygger ultimately did emerge as the leader of the conservative (Electoral League) party in Sweden, but here the situation is far, far more favorable to him and to the right-wing more generally. The government's failures in Finland are something which has brought widespread dissatisfaction and Trygger is playing the nationalistic outrage therefrom very well here. That is what allows him to firmly push aside Arvid Lindman and take centerstage. IOTL Trygger ended up as Prime Minister for a short interlude in the early 1920s, but I want to make clear that the political circumstances are far more favorable to him this time around and that both the Liberals and Social Democrats are in a worse position here. As for the continued unity of the Social Democrats, I thought the OTL split was quite closely predicated on the sudden escalation of revolutionary forces within the party in the immediate aftermath of the October Revolution. With things playing out at a slower pace, the Social Democratic Party doesn't attempt its "muzzle charter" which IOTL ended up driving the entire youth movement out of the party. Instead the conflict remains of an intra-party nature and causes a great deal of internal strife for the Social Democrats.
(8) I have Ekman acting a bit more forward than IRL and pressing his central cause a bit more forcefully. IOTL the Liberal party broke into these factions as well, but here I have the Free-Spirited come out much more clearly ahead far earlier. Primarily I am working off the assumption that Edén and his faction were the primary force behind the OTL Liberal Party which broke from the Free-Spirited, and that this faction has been utterly crippled by the butterflies in Sweden, as such they collapse and are essentially defunct by 1924 instead of continuing on with a split Liberal movement until 1934, when they united IOTL.
(9) So with the Social Democrats having remained united up till this point, the radical wing is far, far stronger and make a major impact. With Branting's death Höglund is able to emerge victorious in the leadership struggle with Hansson, setting Sweden on a significantly different path from OTL. IOTL Hansson succeeded Branting and basically set the entire framework for Sweden's welfare state and sat as Prime Minister from 1932-1946. Very few Swedish leaders have had as much of an influence on the modern Swedish state as he has had, so him losing out in the leadership struggle here is big. IOTL Höglund was leader of the first split of the Social Democrats and entered the Comintern at the head of the Swedish Communist Party, only to fall out with the Soviets following Lenin's death and eventually making his way back to the Social Democrats while the Swedish far-left splintered and descended into intense infighting. He was Mayor of Stockholm from 1940-1950 and remained committed to Leninist ideological principles even as part of the Social Democrats until his death in 1956.
(10) I am breezing through the 1920s a bit quickly, but basically the alliance between the Free-Spirited People's Party under Ekman and Trygger's Electoral League hold through the decade and are able to stave off the rising left-wing. Another political force I have been neglecting almost entirely in this period are the Peasants' Party, who were an important fourth-place force in Swedish politics and built an alliance with the Social Democrats IOTL. Here the added fear of the left-wing keeps the Peasants Party from allying with the Social Democrats, and they instead remain an occasional partner of the government, while not being a part of it. It took me a bit to realize, but when you look at a map from the Swedish perspective in the late 1920s and early 1930s, it becomes a very threatening picture from the right-wing perspective.
(11) Alright, a lot going on here. So basically I am using the survival of Olof Palme as a way of making the New Sweden movement significantly more prominent and inserting it into the Electoral League. One thing to note here is that Sweden's far-right movement is a lot more "native" in its inspirations and structure, with only loose inspiration from the Integralist Iberian movements - a sharp contrast to the Fascist and Nazi copy-cats who dominated the Swedish far-right IOTL and never really amounted to much as a result. Here it is very much an outgrowth of the Swedish right-wing fears and paranoia at being surrounded by Social Democratic/Socialist/Communist states mixing with illiberal Swedish Monarchism and agrarian conservatism - all forces very much present IRL in Sweden at the time. IOTL the Munck Corps was actually revealed by Hallgren, who was leading one of the main fascist movements in Sweden at the time as part of an internal power struggle in that movement - Hallgren's rival had been behind the weapon's shipment and revealing it undermined that rival. It was a pretty significant scandal at the time, particularly considering it was a left-wing Social Democratic government in power at the time. As for Ivar Kreuger, IOTL he was a major financier ruined by the Great Depression, who had provided funding to Prime Minister CG Ekman and more generally to right-wing causes. His bankruptcy and subsequent death by gunshot (likely a suicide but unclear) unleashed a massive scandal in Sweden since Kreuger had taken major loans from the government and central bank with the support of Ekman's government, and his death and bankruptcy nearly crashed the Swedish economy. Here he survives and thrives without the Great Depression, becoming a primary financier of the Swedish right-wing.
(12) What exactly happened? Who killed Trygger? Why was he killed? Was it really the Communists? Or was it an inside job, a false flag? Those are the sorts of questions which will swirl around the events of the Mynttorget Incident ITTL and I don't quite feel like answering any of those. I think it is better to let you guys speculate and make your own conclusions. I know that the sheer scale of the coup's success is pretty stunning, but I would remind you that Sweden had already been under Conservative rule since the early 1920s, and there are plenty of people willing to throw in with the new government. It is wildly successful and catches just about the entire left-wing by surprise. Luck and the existing elements I had previously enumerated - Munck's Corps, Kreuger and the New Swedish Movement - are what win this for the Swedish right-wing. As for the fate of the Social Democratic leadership, many languish in prison for years, but more end up making it into exile - some going to Norway, others to Russia and a few further abroad.
(13) I know things are moving quickly here, but I do hope the justification is satisfactory. Basically we see a complete realignment of the Swedish political spectrum, with the New Swedes emerging as the dominant political power under Olof Palme. Democracy at least ostensibly remains in place, the left has just been firmly pushed out of the political spectrum. The Christian Democrats (Christian Solidarity) are trying to position themselves as an alternative to the Social Democrats, but are hesitant and careful in how they do so for obvious reasons. Ultimately, Sweden's far-right turn is timed pretty perfectly with what is happening in the countries around them (completely by coincidence, I am sure…) and ends up being part of the wider right-wing shift that occurs in Northern and Central Europe in this period.
End Note:
I really hope you guys enjoy this one. I think I ended up getting things to play out quite well with this one. I am sorry that it is a bit later than I mentioned I wanted it out, but, well… I have been a bit distracted these past couple weeks with having work this month and events in the Ukraine.
Given how much time I have spent researching and writing about that particular part of the world, the conflict got a bit too close for comfort when I thought of working on ADiJ. Had about two weeks where I just didn't even want to think about the timeline, but I am happy I got this feature update written.
It has been rather fascinating to dig into Sweden's history and contrasting it with its other Nordic neighbors. One thing that really struck me as I was researching was that the Swedish Monarchy was a lot more powerful than the Danish one up until the Great War. In fact, the Great War ends up looking like a truly crucial turning point in the power balance and the final end of Monarchical authority in Sweden. Additionally, it is the fall of Hammarskjöld and Skram, leading into the pairing of Edén and Branting which set the framework for the Social Democratic dominance which followed IOTL. Sweden's Social Democratic Party would go on to utterly dominate Swedish politics for decades to come, most of the century in fact, and it has been a rather intriguing challenge to consider a world in which it is the right-wing which ends out on top instead.
I have ended up using Olof Palme, who was the first man killed in the Swedish Brigade, as a stand-in for the far-right leader here mostly because his background works and I found none of the alternative IRL far-right leaders remotely possible as national leaders. He has been a pretty interesting character to consider, given how relatively little is really known about him. He really was cut down before he could make a name for himself, but considering the careers of many of his relatives I don't think this rise to prominence is out of the realm of the possible.
I look forward to seeing what you all think.
