“Homefront” probably isn’t the right word since Sweden was a neutral country, but what was daily life actually like? How strict was rationing? Did major cities have blackout rules? Was it basically like the British Homefront without the air raids? Is the time period a popular subject in Swedish pop culture like in the UK?
I do not know what life was like in Sweden in WWII but it is worth adding that both the British and the Germans used naval blockades against Sweden in WWII. I’d suspect that made it worse than rationing in the UK which was getting regularly supplied by the US.
There were poor wheat harvests in 1940 and 1941 which only compounded the hardships caused by the blockades. The most reliable employment was in the German owned mines in Sweden that sent ore by rail to ports in Nazi occupied Norway.
As I was born in '61, I can only relate what my parents and their parents told me. And of course written records, films, news reels ASF
As far as I can tell, it wasn’t bad at all, when it came to rationing and the like. Some imprted goods were of course absent from grocery stores and people drove using wood gas,. Pictures I’ve seen have cars with a small trailer that somehow made it all work.
Mom was very young, but dad was 13 when the war ended. They grew up in Helsingborg, which is just across the water from Helsingør• (3.8 kms or 2.4 mi), so they could actually watch the occupied land. There were no black outs in Sweden in the way they were done in the U.K. but lights were turned off to save on electricity.
All in all, not a lot of hardship for the general population.
Now, for the less nice things.
While I wouldn’t consider our nation on par with what Vidkun Quisling did in Norway, we weren’t exactly squeaky clean either, bending over backwards to appease Germany.
Here’s a short rundown.
A lot of the Nazi monuments built in the 30’s were made from Swedish granite. And a lot of the weaponry from Swedish steel. We benefited twofold, since the our industry was intact and after the war, the rebuilding ended up buying steel, wood and stone from us. Thank you Marshall. /s
In June 1941, the Swedish government allowed the transit of the Engelbrecht division from Norway to the Finnish/Russian border. The two wars Finland fought against the USSR is better told in another thread••. Apart from that, which is fairly well known in Sweden, the Nazis used Swedish rail throughout the war to send troops in and out of Norway. An estimated 2 million such transits where supposedly done, but I can’t find a cite in English.
We tried our hardest to paint ourselves as “neutral,” and the scare quotes are on purpose. In reality, sycophancy might be a better word, at least until Stalingrad. IF we had entered the war, it’s my personal belief that we would’ve done so in support of Germany, mostly because Germany supported Finland and ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend.’ There were of course some real Nazis, but from all I gather, they were a fringe group.
Another matter is that Sweden and Germany have always had very close ties. Our royalty and nobility married theirs. They were a large trading partner. Up to WWII, kids learned German, not English as their second language. We sent our brightest to Unis in Germany, not the U.S. or England. At least for what we now call STEM curriculum.
Göring spent some pre-war time in Stockholm. The wiki article is short on details, but the Swedish version says that he was committed to an “Asylum for the mentally ill and violent” in or about 1925, due to morphine addiction. During his time in Sweden hd met his future wife Carin.
And the grandfather of our current king, Carl XVI Gustaf, was Charles Edward, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, head of the the nazified Red Cross and a proponent of eugenics. Somehow he survived the purge of the Nazis, but died in poverty 1954. He never rejected Nazism.
All in all. We fared well. In part due to being somewhat sympathetic to Germany, albeit not the Nazi regime, and also due to some clever manoeuvring behind closed doors.
I live about two miles from the local Opera House, which was constructed during the war and inaugurated in 1944. We’re close to Copenhagen and the outrage on the other side of the narrow strait was very strong. Glittering chandeliers, canapés and German Sekt (no champagne for obvious reasons) and super trouper lights across the sky made for generations of resentment from the Danes.
• Where Kronborg castle is, i.e. where Shakespear set Hamlet. I’ver seen it there, in the courtyard. Nice.
•• Sweden, both the governing bodies and the majority of the population was heavily in favor of helping out Finland against the Russian bear, Chiulkdren were evacuated from Finland to Sweden, volunteers from Sweden travelled to Finland to join the fight (and some went to Germany as well, though not as many).
ETA:
All of this is wrong.
I was surprised to see how common vehicles converted to using wood for fuel were in Europe in WWII.
The Japanese also used a lot of wood and charcoal-burning vehicles.
Virtually no gasoline was allocated for private vehicles and very little for any non-military ones.
Disposing of night soil became a large problem in Tokyo as there weren’t enough vehicles.
Thank you very much for your informative post.
Thanks. I found the Swedish version of Supersizers on YouTube. Subtitles would’ve helped but I think I was nore or less able to follow it. I was surprised avocados were popular enough in Sweden during the 30s for their shortage to be an issue.
