Sweden: New centre will dispel Viking myths (Traders rather than Raiders)

Hitler didn't think about invading Sweden for three reasons:

(1) Swedes are beautiful Ayrans in his eyes. He did not want to hurt Aryans.

(2) Sweden is out of the way, nowhere near the lines of advance east and west Hitler had in mind. He had enough fish to fry with Russia, France, the USSR and the USA to want to spend resourced beating up on "fellow Aryans" in remote Sweden.

(3) The only thing Sweden had that Hitler really WANTED and needed was nickel, and the Swedes sold the Third Reich all of the nickel that it cared to purchase.

Sweden hasn' been in a war for almost 200 years because there hasn't BEEN a war for almost 200 years that would have involved Sweden. Sweden WAS involved in the Napoleonic Wars, indeed accepting a French King (Marshall Bernadotte). But after that there WAS no general European war for 100 years, until 1914. France and Germany dusted it up for about a year, and there was some unpleasantness at the periphery in the Crimea, but it wasn't that people weren't making war with Sweden out of fear of Sweden. I was becore Euopeans weren't making war at all, in general.

The situation in World War I was similar to World War II. Sweden is out of the way, not on the line of advance of ANY of the Great Powers. Indeed, HOLLAND was neutral for the entirety of World War I, even though its sandwiched between warring Germany, France and England, and that wasn't because everyone was trembling in fear of the Dutch military. It was because Holland isn't "on the way" to either Paris or Berlin.

World War II, the only OTHER war in Europe Sweden could have reasonably gotten involved with after 1815, was already discussed.

Sweden has been left alone by European war for the same reason that Ireland was. It's effectively an island, not on the way TO anywhere, and not tied to either of the alliance systems.

Nothing wrong with that, but FEAR of Sweden never entered Hitler's mind. Once he knew the Swedes would sell him all the nickel he needed, Sweden was off the map.

Same thing with Switzerland, actually. It was not that the wehrmacht trembled at the legendary might of the Swiss guards, that Switzerland was left alone. Switzerland was left alone because it's not on the way TO anywhere important, and because it had an important resource the Nazis needed and which the Swiss were happy to sell to them, and to the allies too: financial security and stability. Besides, most of the Swiss are German in origin, and Hitler just plain didn't like attacking his beloved "Aryans". He seems to have been truly sorry to have had to make war on Germanic England, because the English wouldn't be "reasonable" and let him have his way in France and then Russia.

Put it a different way: had Switzerland refused financial services, or Sweden refused nickel, then Hitler would have done to them what he did to those Germanic British who refused him: He would have attacked. Difference is, Britain managed to hold, but the wehrmacht would have torn the Swiss and Swedes to pieces. Too small versus too big.

Colonies made Britain rich in the 18th and 19th century, BUT empoverished it later on.

I can pretty much guarantee you that throughout its history the British Empire spent more on defending and administrating its colonies than it extracted from the people in taxes. As a classic example consider its 18th century American colonies. I don't remember the exact numbers, but if I recall correctly the British nation had expenses in America that were 30 times or so higher than it extracted in revenue during the colonial period.

The British did indeed become wealthy during the same period that their empire became so massive, but to say that A caused B is a gross oversimplification.

Britain became wealthy by trading and because it was the first country to undergo the industrial revolution. At the time and since many have pointed out that Britain could have just traded without colonization and its attendant expenses and would have been even wealthier had it done so. Again, after the American Revolution trade with America increased greatly. The Brits now had an even larger volume of profitable trade with North America but with no attendant expenses.

What "productive capacity" of India did the British live off? Your theory appears to be that colonizers came in and extracted taxes and turned a profit on the deal. I'm just pointing out that this is never what happened. Most colonies were in very poor areas, as rich areas were generally able to defend themselves against the colonizers. Nobody ever got rich by conquering and ruling a bunch of very poor people. Look how well we're doing in Iraq and they have massive oil resources.

"Put it a different way: had Switzerland refused financial services, or Sweden refused nickel, then Hitler would have done to them what he did to those Germanic British who refused him: He would have attacked."

Perhaps you should consider these facts:

1. Nickel might have been of some importance. The role of this certain Swedish raw material regarding the Nazi war machine was, in any case, dwarfed by the importance of SWEDISH IRON ORE. In 1941, the year of Operation Barbarossa, the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Swedish iron ore made up for something like 11.5 million tons of the total Nazi German need of 16 million tons!

So why didn't Britain or Soviet invade us?

The reason to this is the same one as to why Hitler didn't invade Sweden at the end of the war, when we stopped our deliveries of iron ore fueling that little particular German project:

The losses would have been extreme.

From whatever angle you try to gain control by military means over the basic production centers of Sweden, you'd face either

OPEN WATERS - where you are/would have been exposed to our competent air force and suchlike corps

MOUNTAINS - where elite "jägar"-troops reigned. Contrary to the case of Norway, a country which resisted Nazi invasion in a very competent manner, Sweden did NOT deliberately disarm herself during the 1920's and 1930's. Add our population which is twice the size and our possession of an advanced arms industry Norway did not have...

Woods - Trying this route is about as stupid as it possibly could get. Tiny Finland, an even smaller and lesser developed country at that time than Norway made the Soviet Union look ridiculous when invaded. The Finns were equipped with terrain knowledge, simple but reliable hand guns and a great portion of fighting spirit. That was enough to shake the foundations of the Soviet war machine.
Sweden would have been 10 times worse a fight.

To any Swede, properly educated in the field of modern warfare at that time, WWII must have been one big YAWN in a way (not denying Nazism had to be stopped)!

"Colonies made Britain rich in the 18th and 19th century, BUT empoverished it later on.
I can pretty much guarantee you that throughout its history the British Empire spent more on defending and administrating its colonies than it extracted from the people in taxes. As a classic example consider its 18th century American colonies. I don't remember the exact numbers, but if I recall correctly the British nation had expenses in America that were 30 times or so higher than it extracted in revenue during the colonial period.

The British did indeed become wealthy during the same period that their empire became so massive, but to say that A caused B is a gross oversimplification.

Britain became wealthy by trading and because it was the first country to undergo the industrial revolution. At the time and since many have pointed out that Britain could have just traded without colonization and its attendant expenses and would have been even wealthier had it done so. Again, after the American Revolution trade with America increased greatly. The Brits now had an even larger volume of profitable trade with North America but with no attendant expenses.

What "productive capacity" of India did the British live off? Your theory appears to be that colonizers came in and extracted taxes and turned a profit on the deal. I'm just pointing out that this is never what happened. Most colonies were in very poor areas, as rich areas were generally able to defend themselves against the colonizers. Nobody ever got rich by conquering and ruling a bunch of very poor people. Look how well we're doing in Iraq and they have massive oil resources."

In terms of the basic line of argument, I agree with everything you're saying.

European colonialism was a "sick farce" as any aware Briton would've put it today. It was inhumane and the whole, basic operation was unprofitable in the LONG run and the development of nuclear weapons just made the possession of colonies more or less irrelevant from a military point of view.

However, my conclusion is that during several years, countries like Holland, Britain and France made money from their colonies.

Losing the American colonies in the late 18th century was a giant setback to British endeavors in the colonial department at that time and the development in 1920-1960 was probably more of an expense than a reliable source of income, still the 19th century was Klondike.

Anyhow, please don't forget upon my basic argument:

- Raids (like those of the Vikings) can be profitable from time to time.

- Colonies can be even more profitable. For a period, it can work amazingly well. (Look, for instance, at ancient Greek colonies like Syracuse, Sicily where trade, art and culture prospered).

- The best way though to gain world domination, is by achieving hegemony in the fields of technology, science and trade networks. This explains why Western Civilization rules the world today. Whatever any politically correct mind opposed to it happens to think of this fact, it is a rock hard fact.

Oh, I don't think I'll wet my pants worrying about the abilities of the Swedish military. Anyway, why would Hitler want to invade Sweden when they were one of his largest trade partners, and supplied him with materials from around the world he could not obtain otherwise, plus the iron ore and ball bearings. And if Sweden was so brave, why did they send thousands of Soviet citizens back to their deaths in 1945? Why were German troops and refugees who reached Sweden turned over to the Russians?

Anyway, I don't hate Sweden, although I do have a problem with some of the leftist actions of the govt, just as I do with most European govts. BTW, my Great-grandmother was from Gotenburg.

Iron ore was important too.

Why didn't BRITAIN invade?

Well, for one thing, the British were fighting for their lives.

For a second thing, HOW?

To GET TO Sweden, the British would have had to sail a fleet through the Skagerrak, which was controlled at both sides by the Germans. The Royal Navy would have gone down to the Luftwaffe just like warships did everywhere in that war when facing air power unescorted. The Skagerrak was well out of range of British support aircraft, and there was no base for them. The Germans, by contrast, could fly air support over their fleet right out of Germany itself, or Denmark. Or Norway.

The Finns were very brave and did a lot of damage to the Russians, but they were Russians, at the nadir of their military power. Consider how the Germans ripped them up in 1941, which was orders of magnitude worse than anything the Finns were able to do to them.

I'm trying to bring you down gently from the notion that it was concerns over Swedish military prowess that kept the Germans out. The Germans never planned to invade Sweden anyway, and wouldn't have unless the Swedes cut off the nickel and, as you pointed out, the iron ore. Had they done that, the paratroops would have been in Stockholm in a few days, and the German army would have rolled through the place in those tanks, etc. Sweden is far north and cold. Disrupt the economy, and people have nothing to eat and no heat, and it gets bad in a hurry. The Germans were never going to go rushing off into the forests to try and mop up every Swede. Why bother? They would have seized the capital and chief port, siezed the iron mines, and the country would have quickly come to terms rather than losing a third of the population in an unsupplied and unheated winter...which is precisely the sort of thing the Germans would have been perfectly willing to do. Recall that the Finns, even, did surrender to the Russians in the end and give the Russians territory and make peace. Finland was brave, but the USSR won the Winter War.

There is no doubt the Swedes would have fought bravely for their homeland. There is no doubt that the wehrmacht would have conquered Sweden, or Finland, in a few weeks.

The Russians didn't have effective airpower. The Russians didn't have effective tanks. The Russians didn't have professional troops in 1940. The Germans had everything, and the most experienced and best trained and equipped army in the world in 1940.

Sweden was left alone by the Germans because there was no reason to invade.
Sweden was left alone by the Russians because it's remote, on the way to nowhere, and because the Russians had no navy.
Sweden was left alone by the British, who DID have a reason to block ore shipments to Germany, because the British had no airpower that could cover their operations in the Baltic, and no bases. Sweden doesn't border the North Sea, and the British couldn't GET TO Sweden without going through Nazi Germany first. And Nazi Germany was far more powerful than Britain. So, Sweden was protected from Russia by the sea and the remoteness, protected from Germany by cooperation, and protected from the British by the Germans. Sweden couldn't have defended herself for long against the Germans. Fortunately for the Swedes, she didn't have to.

Not even some of the most advanced weapons on earth frighten you.

Great.

It's highly ridiculous to imagine that Nazi Germany could have stood any chance of defeating the military resitance Sweden was able to produce at the beginning of WWII. At the height of the Nazi military might yes, the Nazis had strength.

But around 1940?

In fact, Nazi Germany was very weak at that point. They could take on Poland, a country without political stability, military organisation and natural hinders to invasion, but how could the Nazis possibly have conquered Sweden?

Keeping in mind the fact that tiny, unarmed Norway produced a problem later on, what kind of situation would heavily armed Sweden have offered?

How would Nazi invaders hinder an industrial plant like the Bofors one of Karlskoga produce state of the art weaponry 24-7?

By sophisticated propaganda fabricated by Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels?

(Look, for instance, at ancient Greek colonies like Syracuse, Sicily where trade, art and culture prospered).

NOT a good example for your argument.

Greek colonies were never attempts to conquer and rule an alien peopleor area for the benefit of the home state. They were instead each entirely independent of the mother city and each other from the beginning. While Syracuse did indeed become wealthy, Syracuse was never controlled politically by Corinth, the mother state.

It is as if all the American colonies had been independently started up by Britain, but with Britain never making any attempt to actually rule the colonies.

You're actually missing the best example of a truly profitable colonial empire, the Spanish. During its heyday in the 16th and 17th centuries Spain dominated Europe by the silver it mined in Peru and Mexico.

However, in the long run this profitability destroyed Spain, as the Spanish government and people attempted to live off this imported wealth rather than develop their own economy. The Spanish wealth flowed right through Spain and into other European countries, mostly Britain and the Netherlands, ironically Spain's greatest enemies.

The effects on Spanish society were remarkably similar to the effects today on Arab societies from oil production. Despite enormous transfers of wealth to them they somehow don't ever seem to really become developed economies. The money comes in then goes straight back out to buy goods and services. The only thing they seem to be effective at actually producing is terrorism.

Other examples of profitable colonies include the production of plantation products such as sugar, tobacco and rubber in various colonies in the 18th and 19th centuries. Given the primitive societies found at the time in areas where these products could be grown, it is unlikely they could have been produced reliably without colonization by more advanced societies. However, even in these examples the colonizers didn't invade and take over existing productive capacity. They had to build a productive capacity that hadn't previously existed, a quite different kettle of fish.

I'm not attempting to say that colonies have never produced profits for the conqueror. But the idea that colonization has historically been a cheap, easy and reliable way to acquire wealth is just inaccurate. Even when colonies have been wealth-generators for their "owner," they have tended to create distortions in the home economy that were disastrous for the colonizer in the long run, with Spain and Portugal the best examples.

This is not to say that colonizers haven't generally believed that their colonies were profitable, just that their beliefs were usually inaccurate.

"Sweden was left alone by the Germans because there was no reason to invade."

Or no ability.

- If you consider the military strength of Germany at that time, which was very UNimpressive and also take into consideration the "failure" of Sweden to ridicously disarm herself in the years prior to WWII, it might just become clear to you why the last thing Nazi-Germany would think of in the years of 1939-1941 was trying to invade Sweden.

A sad thing, though, is the fact that Sweden cooperated with the Nazis out of economical reasons.

Later on, we assured the allies of our support.

The sad part of the story is this;

We never needed to double-deal.

We could have stood up for civilization already from the start.

Making such a stand would have weakened the Nazi project - and the lives of millions could have been spared.

I wrote a research paper in college which examined the relationship of the introduction and propagation of Christianity in Scandinavia, with the end of the (violent) Viking age.

It is an interesting fact that within 100 years of Christianity's acceptance, the violent pillaging, raping and attacks ceased--and the Scandinavian peoples became an accepted part of Europe.

It would appear too that the main reason they were so feared was due to their terrorist type violence, and the fact they were the last of the pagan Europeans left at the time. The fact that much of the conversion was top-down...(forced on them by their kings) accounts in my opinion, why the viking (used as a verb) continued for 100 years after Christianity first came. It took a while for the Christian faith to become real, and the old ways to be abandoned.

As to why modern Scandinavia is so productive? I think perhaps the Lutheran work ethic may have something to do with it.

Great post, Sherman Logan.

I agree with a lot of what you're saying above, although I disagree in some areas.

I fail to see in what manner the founding of Syracuse was NOT an expression of POLITICAL and ECONOMICAL intensions (and therefore an act of colonialization), but I might be wrong.

Whatever Spain gained through importing large amounts of precious metals to Europe was through their empire was lost through the process of the great inflation of that day.

The biggest failure of Spain in history is not that one. Neither is it the one of its holy armada.

In the 17th century, the rulers of Spain and other catholic "clans" tried to gain control of France and the European continet at large.

They failed.

A major reason to it all was Gustavus Adolphus.

In the aftermath of this European calamity, one thing evident was that of precious, "non-European" metals not providing a key to dominance over the European continent.

Sooner, it caused a major inflation all over Europe at that time.

All in all, the colonial "adventures" of Spain were unavailing and disadvantageous.

British colonialism was far more successful.

The progress of it wasn't affected even by the loss of the American colonies in the late 18th century.

British rule over India and probably large parts of Africa too was VERY profitable.

All I was trying to point out is that colonization has meant different things at different times. The ancient Greeks saw it as a way of essentially splitting their city/state and sending part of the population, sometimes involuntarily, to another location to start a new and independent city-state. With rare exceptions they never thought of it as Corinth establishing an empire of dependent cities.

Syracuse and other Greek colonies were fully independent from the start. This was utterly different from the Roman colonies, which were military establishments in hostile territory, established as extensions of the Roman state.

Similarly in modern times the term "colony" has included a variety of situations. New South Wales and Virginia were very different from Nigeria, India or Jamaica. Calling them all "colonies" tends to obscure that the differences were much greater than the similiarities.

By and by, I guess the Vikings developed an appetite for profitable trade as overall production levels escalated and a general European "spirit" aiming at exchange, doing interesting trade and sharing heartily toasts with each other rapidly increased until the days prior to the Black Death.

"It is an interesting fact that within 100 years of Christianity's acceptance, the violent pillaging, raping and attacks ceased--and the Scandinavian peoples became an accepted part of Europe."

Encountering Christianity probably helped vikings develop an understanding of the roads leading to continously increasing wealth and true civilization.

"As to why modern Scandinavia is so productive? I think perhaps the Lutheran work ethic may have something to do with it."

Without a doubt, this is true.

'But there is something about knowledge of Viking traditions that goes beyond Scandinavia and countries with strong ties to Scandinavia like the UK and the US. That certain something is an awareness of how trade, capitalism, science and investment in new technology can create a better future for all of mankind!!'

On my travels to Sweden and Iceland, I found it very hard to find established museums on the Vikings. The one great place to visit with regards to Viking history in Stockholm though is the island of Birka. That place is really an awesome place to see and I highly recommend it. I always got the feeling from swedes that viking history wasn't a big deal. Maybe I met the wrong people and maybe missed some other places that had viking history. I dunno...

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