The nature motifs in the corridor of the Swedish mission to the United Nations once prompted Finland's permanent representative to tease a colleague by commenting that the wilderness imagery was full of ‘the molehills you equate with mountains in your happy Swedish mind’.Footnote 1 In this view, misperceptions about the world were the price Swedes paid for remaining unscathed by the conflicts of the twentieth century. A striking example of this is a social democratic front-bencher's contribution to the Swedish parliament's foreign policy debate in October 1945. He suggested that future historiography would likely ponder why Sweden – in contrast to Norway and Denmark – had not been present when the United Nations were established and demanded that the government explain why not.Footnote 2 The government's answer was simple: as a neutral power in the Second World War, Sweden did not qualify as a founding member of the grand coalition's organisation for collective security.
The governments of the United Kingdom and France were the only ones to have deliberately engaged (for reasons of power politics) in the war against the Axis powers. All others in the anti-Hitler alliance, including the United States and the Soviet Union, had joined the war either upon being attacked by the enemy or from the more comfortable position of being at a safe geographical distance. As a contemporary Swedish commentator noted, the wartime alliance, rather than being a community of values, was an assemblage of ‘nations who, by historical coincidences, have been lumped together in the United Nations’.Footnote 3 This arbitrariness did not prevent their governments from claiming the higher moral ground in world politics, and their devotion to the fight against Nazism gave weight to the claim.
This article tracks the Swedish relationship to the United Nations in the period between 1941, when the world body emerged as an anti-Hitler alliance, through 1946, when Sweden joined what had by that time become an international organisation. This is a little explored field, both for Sweden and the United Nations at large, which bridges the scholarship on the Second World War and the Cold War.Footnote 4 By focusing on how the Swedish policy of neutrality was seen as concordant or discordant with UN membership and how the United Nations was then perceived in Sweden,Footnote 5 this article calls into question the well-established notion of Sweden as a determined neutral power and enthusiastic supporter of the United Nations. Due to the lack of specialised studies on the topic, it is also absent from recent surveys of Swedish history and foreign policy, although it would illuminate key aspects of Sweden's international relations.Footnote 6
This article is the last in a series of studies on different Nordic countries’ routes into the United Nations. Prior investigation has shown that Finland was not as indifferent to remaining outside of the United Nations between 1947 and 1955 as politicians and researchers from that country have tended to suggest.Footnote 7 Conversely, the early enthusiasm for the United Nations generally attributed to Denmark and Norway did not actually exist. Rather, this is a myth that has been used to explain those countries’ receptiveness to military alignment within NATO by 1949 as a consequence of either their crushed aspirations for universal collective security or their desire to return to a strong Atlantic orientation. Disappointment with UN idealism justified Realpolitik in the face of persistent neutralist sentiments and the advocacy of a Nordic security alternative. While Norway, as a belligerent member of the Allies, was a UN member by definition, Denmark received a last-minute welcome to the charter conference that whitewashed Danish collaboration with its Nazi German occupiers and overlooked the fact that it had not been formally at war with Germany. The Norwegian government in exile had insisted on being given a more privileged status in the United Nations than Denmark, but as a latecomer to the conference the Danish government managed to enlist neighbourly support for its admission.Footnote 8
Like Denmark and Norway, Sweden had been neutral during the First World War but had ceased to talk about neutrality while a member of the League of Nations. However, all three countries rediscovered the policy of neutrality in the mid-1930s, when it became obvious that the League no longer functioned as an organisation for collective security.Footnote 9 Unlike its Scandinavian neighbours, Sweden was able to remain neutral during the Second World War, which distanced the country from the United Nations and reinforced its legalistic approach to international affairs. Thus, there was no automatic UN membership for Sweden as there was for Norway, and there was less political need for the international recognition Denmark required, although the line between neutrality and collaboration was fluid in the eyes of the allied powers. There was also some ambiguous evidence concerning Sweden's behaviour during the first years of the Second World War.
From Neutrality to Collective Security
Sweden commonly believed that neutrality was a virtue that qualified it for a unique role in world affairs. A communist taking part in a parliamentary foreign policy debate in October 1945 observed that ‘inappropriate Swedish bragging about the splendour of Swedish foreign policy during the war . . . constitutes the most prominent feature of Swedish attempts at rehabilitation’.Footnote 10 Already at the beginning of the war, the social democratic ‘father of the house’ (ålderspresident), Carl Lindhagen, had advocated the idea of Sweden as a ‘spiritual great power’ (andlig stormakt) for the cause of peace.Footnote 11 Although aware of her country's loss of goodwill in the war, social democratic intellectual Alva Myrdal put forward the same idea in more modern terms: ‘we, the spared country, should have vision left’. According to Myrdal, who went on to become director of the UN Department of Social Affairs, the deployment of Swedish expertise in social and urban planning represented an opportunity for the world to ‘get better’. From her perspective as a London resident in September 1941, post-war preparations appeared to have been triggered by the Western powers, and she warned that should Sweden fail to understand its mission in international reconstruction it would mean ‘an unnecessary loss for the world’ – not to mention a deterioration in the country's position in international affairs.Footnote 12
Two and a half years later, her husband, Gunnar Myrdal, an earlier advocate of Swedish involvement in post-war planning and later Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Europe, realised that such engagement was untimely in light of the Allied view of neutrality. However, he regarded belligerency, particularly around the experience of foreign occupation, as having a negative moral impact on the affected countries. For this reason, and in view of the Swedes’ inherent qualities, he pleaded that his country offer unsolicited advice on the presumption that Swedes were ‘particularly chosen to be advocates of the global interest’. His recommendation to his fellow citizens went as follows: ‘we should play our role and say our lines. We should do that even if the only thing we win is the aesthetic satisfaction and the honour of having been right.’Footnote 13 Unfortunately for Myrdal, who was an economist, his alarming prediction of a post-war financial crisis, which he advanced in the same book in which the lines cited above appear, proved incorrect.
In June 1940 the Swedish government withdrew its permanent representative to the League of Nations in Geneva. Foreign Minister Christian Günther announced in a report to the Swedish parliament that, while Sweden's funding of its membership obligations in the League had been appropriated, the sum was not transferred because the organisation had ceased to function.Footnote 14 The ‘self-initiated withdrawal of Sweden from the ruins of the League of Nations that had been erected on the Versailles victors’ peace’ was approved by Lindhagen in the debate on the budget. At the same time, on 14 August 1940, exactly one year before the signing of the Atlantic Charter by Churchill and Roosevelt, Lindhagen proposed a ‘Swedish initiative in transnational [mellanfolklig] foreign policy for a novel universal League of Nations based on mobilisation of the old truths’.Footnote 15 For procedural reasons, the Swedish parliament declined to deal with the initiative, and Lindhagen retired the following year.Footnote 16
Swedish voluntary organisations continued to advocate the idea of a world body during the Second World War. The board of the Swedish League of Nations Association managed to not mention the war in its annual report spanning July 1939 to June 1940. Instead, they merely lamented ‘the events hampering trans-national collaboration that have occurred in the international sphere in the past year’.Footnote 17 Shortly thereafter, at its annual convention, the Swedish League of Nations Association changed its name to the Swedish Association for a New League of Nations (Svenska föreningen för ett nytt folkens förbund).Footnote 18 In Autumn 1944 it merged with two other peace organisations, thereby becoming the predecessor of the current UN Association of Sweden (Svenska FN-förbundet), which, toward the end of the war, advocated that international relations undergo a world-federalist transformation. The recommendations put forth included the adoption of the International Labour Organisation's tripartite structure of a collaboration of governments, labour unions and business in national delegations. The assembly of elected representatives of the people in a bicameral world parliament, similar to the United States Congress, was also suggested.Footnote 19
Despite the appearance of such initiatives throughout the course of the war, references to a United Nations with a programme of post-war international reconstruction were sparse in Sweden.Footnote 20 Not only were the defining features of a future peace organisation unknown, but neither the Swedish government nor the general public was willing to move in that direction. In 1943 Sweden's minister of defence, Per Edvin Sköld, held that his country's foreign policy makers, while not uninterested in international cooperation, preferred to determine the extent of their involvement independently, and even in the coming peace, their country's stance would, for some time, have to remain ‘cautious’ (avvaktande) and ‘very much like sympathetic, although armed, neutrality’.Footnote 21
The Dumbarton Oaks proposals, in which the four major powers presented their unified view of the proposed UN Organisation, were understood in Sweden as a signal for ‘even the uninvited . . . to spell out their own position’. At the same time the principle that ‘one cannot travel to Washington on ball bearings sent to Berlin’ generally limited deliberations on the matter to the domestic sphere.Footnote 22 There was disappointment that Sweden was not allowed to participate in the preparation for the new world organisation and that it was not given a place among the founders.Footnote 23 Nonetheless, the Swedish Institute of International Affairs (Utrikespolitiska institutet) summoned a study group (funded by the Rockefeller Foundation) on post-war problems. The group discussed the Dumbarton Oaks proposals in detail and reached out to an international audience in a semi-official publication, Peace and Security After the Second World War: A Swedish Contribution to the Subject, which was distributed to journalists and delegations attending the founding conference of the UN Organisation held from 25 April to 26 June 1945 in San Francisco.Footnote 24 The document expressed sympathy with the ‘realism’ of the Dumbarton Oaks proposals, but also noted that its basic principles were ‘in the main strongly adverse to the points of view which Sweden . . . maintained within the League’. It further emphasised that ‘concentration on the solution of the problem of peace and security [as opposed to justice] has gone too far’.Footnote 25 According to a member of the study group, the fact that most participants in the group opposed the veto power in the Security Council was not expressed in the publication.Footnote 26
The archives of the Swedish Foreign Ministry reveal that the governments of Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile and the Netherlands were interested in learning about Swedish points of view on the Dumbarton Oaks proposals.Footnote 27 However, Sweden was never asked to declare war on Germany in the closing days of the Second World War, which would have qualified her for admission to the United Nations. As explained by a Foreign Office official, the Allies were convinced that the country would not give up its policy of neutrality ‘for the mere pleasure of taking part in San Francisco’ – a correct assessment.Footnote 28 In a radio speech shortly before the San Francisco conference, Prime Minister Per Albin Hansson declared somewhat ambiguously that Sweden did not misunderstand the reason she was not included among the invited nations.Footnote 29 Swedish governmental presence at the conference was limited to a lower consulate representative occasionally sitting in the public gallery.Footnote 30
Foreign Minister Günther characterised the Dumbarton Oaks proposals as ‘incomplete and sketchy’ and ‘not tending to promote security’.Footnote 31 In a speech that he considered his political testament he cited the failure to invite neutral powers such as Sweden to the San Francisco conference as short-sighted. He also noted that the leading powers were unwilling to relinquish any of their sovereignty for the sake of international governance, and he therefore advocated the continuation of Sweden's wait and see stance.Footnote 32After the conference a member of the Swedish delegation in Washington, DC described the United Nations's ideology as ‘alien to the Swedish mindset’. Foreign observers regarded Sweden's response to the founding of the new security organisation as ‘cautious and reserved’.Footnote 33
While the war was still going on, the chairman of the parliamentary foreign policy committee and ex-foreign minister, Östen Undén, attributed Sweden's lack of lively public discussion on the future problems of an international organisation to ‘a natural feeling of tact’. As he saw it, ‘a nation that strives for non-involvement in the war and for a policy of neutrality should not feel obliged to supply the belligerents with good advice about the design of peace and the solution of the problem of states’ political cooperation in the future’. However, besides being tactful, this was a strategy to preclude ‘an invitation by deeds, not merely words, to contribute to the attainment of these goals’.Footnote 34
Undén himself was concerned to remain diplomatic and uphold a cautious, non-provocative stance. In the draft of a speech that probably dates back to 1943, a passage in which he described neutral countries such as Sweden as more genuine members of the United Nations than any country belonging to an alliance has been crossed out.Footnote 35 Instead, Undén's public statement expressed his hope that the allies would create a true international organisation based on experience gained from the League of Nations. This would permit his country to ‘abandon a neutral line in favour of a policy of solidarity in accordance with the obligations this new organisation imposes upon us’.Footnote 36
For Undén, who has a reputation for having viewed neutrality as an end in and of itself, neutrality was the second best choice, inferior to a legally defined, functioning system of collective security.Footnote 37 In the mid-1940s Undén hoped such a system would be established, one which commanded ‘military instruments of power’ and implied the ‘military commitment’ of Sweden.Footnote 38 In various discussions concerning the Dumbarton Oaks proposals and their unresolved veto problem, Undén argued that aggressors should not be eligible to vote in the Security Council, as such leverage would narrow the UN security mechanism to a bulwark against Axis revenge. In all other conflict situations a veto would imply ‘the resurgence of the line of neutrality’ for Sweden.Footnote 39 Undén saw the policy of neutrality as belonging to a less developed state of world affairs with which he would have gladly dispensed, and he used it to oppose the idea of an unqualified great power veto. Undén criticised the Dumbarton Oaks proposals for failing to profit from the League's experience that it was essential to strengthen the rule of law in international relations.Footnote 40
In an article entitled ‘Solidarity or Neutrality?’ that appeared five weeks after his appointment as foreign minister, Undén indicated that the veto – despite its failure to match the idea of ‘a more perfect international security organisation’ – paradoxically made it easier for small states to join the United Nations because it removed the risk of their getting involved in great power conflicts. However, Undén's preference was the principle of solidarity, leaving neutrality solely as an exit option. He reasoned that it would imply too limited an amount of ‘trust for the very league that we are even preparing ourselves to enter, if we describe the main foreign policy line of Sweden as a policy of neutrality that our country wishes to adhere to in case the league should disintegrate’.Footnote 41 In a major post-war parliamentary foreign policy debate that took place in October 1945, the Swedish government articulated this idea as follows:
We are willing to participate in a joint security organization and, in the event of a future conflict, to give up neutrality to the extent that the Charter of the organization demands. If, however, against expectation a tendency towards a subdivision of the great powers in two camps would appear within this organisation, our policy must be not to let us be forced into such a group or bloc formation.Footnote 42
These multi-faceted statements implied a thorough re-evaluation of Christian Günther's foreign policy. In a document considered Undén's manifesto as Sweden's foreign minister, Undén explicitly criticised his predecessor's adherence to the policy of neutrality in the post-war international order.Footnote 43 A diplomatic conversation he had with the Soviet minister in Stockholm underlined where Günther's attitude and his own were at odds: Undén's belief in the prospect of international cooperation was the main difference between the two approaches, whereas there was no significant point of disagreement in case such cooperation were to break down.Footnote 44 At the same time, Undén stood for a juridical understanding of neutrality, rather than the political one of his predecessor.Footnote 45 He never left any doubt that he prioritised Swedish membership and commitment to the world organisation over cautious adherence to non-alignment. However, once the veto rule had become a fact, he opted for neutrality as the given security policy reserve line. In retrospect, Undén noted that a post-Second World War creation like the United Nations was likely to be imbued with utopian traits, and that it was ‘of prime importance that the difference that arises between words and reality be observed’.Footnote 46
Application for Membership in the United Nations
The Dumbarton Oaks formula that membership in the planned international body should be ‘open to all peace-loving states’ had bolstered expectations that the wartime alliance would be transformed into a universal organisation with countries like Sweden as members.Footnote 47 The UN Charter confirmed this principle of openness with the qualification that in order to become members, states had to be judged capable of accepting and carrying out their obligations under the Charter. Moreover, the General Assembly was designated the authorised organ for determining admission upon the recommendation of the Security Council.
Although Sweden was confronted with a crisis of international goodwill in the mid-1940s due to concessions it had made to Germany in the early years of the Second World War, the overall situation was mixed and not without its positive aspects. For example, during the San Francisco conference, the UN Theatre showed an eighteen-minute film on life in neutral Sweden. The title, ‘Sweden's Middle Road’, alluded to Marquis W. Childs’ eulogy Sweden: The Middle Way.Footnote 48 While attending the Potsdam Conference from 17 July to 2 August 1945, US President Harry S. Truman noted in his diary: ‘it seems that Sweden, Norway, Denmark and perhaps Switzerland have the only real people's governments on the Continent of Europe’. At the same time, he lumped together the other countries as ‘a bad lot, from the standpoint of the people who do not believe in tyranny’.Footnote 49 The communiqué issued at the conference reproduced the wording of the Charter but also declared that the Big Three would support applications for membership from states that had remained neutral during the war. In the discussion Winston Churchill had named Sweden, Switzerland and Portugal as examples of such countries.Footnote 50
Similarly, when René Massigli, the French representative on the Preparatory Commission of the United Nations, argued in October 1945 for the postponement of the first session of the United Nations, he mentioned Portugal and Sweden as examples of countries the organisation should admit as new members at its first meeting.Footnote 51 Philip Noel-Baker in the Foreign Office was particularly eager to pave the way for early Swedish membership. The Soviet representatives, on the other hand, generally resisted the hasty admission of new members. According to State Department official Leo Pasvolsky, the Soviets favoured postponing the matter until the second part of the first session of the General Assembly, when it was eventually taken up.Footnote 52
The Preparatory Commission drafted the Provisional Rules of Procedure for the General Assembly, which spelled out the steps for admitting new members. An application was to be submitted to the Secretary-General, accompanied by a declaration of readiness to accept the obligations contained in the Charter. If the Security Council recommended a state, the General Assembly then needed to approve the applicant's qualifications for membership by a two-thirds majority vote.Footnote 53 Despite the existence of these rules, Albania's request to join the United Nations on 25 January 1946 was considered premature and its case adjourned.Footnote 54 Reportedly the British held that states like Sweden and Portugal should go first.Footnote 55
In contrast to the domestic controversies that preceded Sweden's accession to the League of Nations on grounds of neutrality, the country's intention to join the United Nations was not questioned by any political group. The government delayed presenting the matter to the Swedish parliament while it waited for an indication that neutral countries would in fact be accepted for membership.Footnote 56 However, the foreign ministry's impression in the second half of 1945 was accurate – there would be no official invitation, and Sweden herself would have to submit a formal application. No action could reasonably be taken before the Western powers had given the signal. At the same time, it was doubtful whether ‘the formal Russians could imagine making a statement that would set a precedent for the decision of the UN Security Council’.Footnote 57
Before, during and after the first part of the initial session of the General Assembly, which convened in London from 10 January to 14 February 1946 and dealt with organisational matters, requests to jointly approach the United Nations arrived from Portugal and Switzerland. Other states indicated their willingness to support Sweden's bid for membership.Footnote 58 At an impromptu Scandinavian foreign ministers’ meeting at the beginning of January of that year, Undén was asked by his Danish and Norwegian colleagues whether Sweden would like their support at the United Nations.Footnote 59 In June the State Department offered to informally survey Security Council members about potential candidates for membership.
The Swedish government, however, declined all offers of assistance. It even indicated to the State Department that it preferred to sound out other members itself.Footnote 60 The rationale was to avoid being cast in discussions as a special case and thereby diminish the risk of getting caught in procedural controversies or countermoves by other accession candidates, as well as avoid being politically tied to other countries and enmeshed in their (alien) issues or become party to an accession horse trade. Instead the Swedes tried to elicit a general UN statement on the desirability of the membership of Sweden and the former neutral powers. Apart from that, the government emphasised the logic of its parliamentary authorisation and time frame and characterised the well-meant initiatives of others as potentially problematic.Footnote 61
That a danger did exist of being coupled with problems at the heart of the United Nations becomes clear from the decade-long controversies regarding the admission of new members. In 1946 Soviet circles were inclined to describe the status of Sweden as ‘bound up with that of the whole Baltic group, which includes Finland, Esthonia, Latvia, and Lithuania’.Footnote 62 For Sweden, these countries were unwanted associates because Finland's status was subject to the conclusion of a peace treaty and the three Baltic republics’ potential as UN members depended on Western acceptance of their occupation by the Soviet Union. There was also the misleading claim of their sovereignty within the Soviet Union and the question of the feasibility of a solution analogous to the controversial UN membership granted to Byelorussia and the Ukraine. Swedish diplomats underscored that they wanted absolutely no part in any haggling ‘and, in particular, not in a Baltic context’.Footnote 63 Their strategy was to put the Swedish cards on the table for Soviet representatives, thereby demonstrating an independent and calm approach to UN membership.Footnote 64 This openness coincided well with Sweden's top foreign policy priority in the immediate post-war period, namely, the establishment of trusting relations with the Soviet Union.
The government bill on authorisation ‘at such a time as might be deemed expedient to take the necessary steps for Sweden's joining the United Nations’ was dated 8 March 1946. The bill maintained that ‘the United Nations does not represent a perfect instrument for safeguarding world peace, but its Charter is marked by a sense of reality’. Ultimately, it stated, everything would depend on the great powers’ ability to cooperate. The bill included a comment by the commander-in-chief of the Swedish defence forces, General Helge Jung, who suggested that Sweden might play a role as bridge-builder. Moreover, it maintained that despite Sweden's potential misgivings with regard to the military obligations tied to UN membership, as a member state it would be able to exert some influence on their implementation, whereas as a non-member it would merely be subject to the UN demand for universal conformity with its basic principles.Footnote 65 In the group convened by the foreign ministry to comment on the Charter, one of the experts, the conservative parliamentarian and lawyer Nils Herlitz, was pressured to modify his comments in a way consistent with an overall recommendation to join the world organisation.Footnote 66
After extensive deliberation, the foreign affairs committee of the Riksdag found ‘predominant reason’ (övervägande skäl) for Sweden to take steps toward joining the United Nations, a stipulation translated for an international audience as ‘overwhelming reasons’. The statement of the committee was described as ‘somewhat harsh’ in tone, but the acceptance of the bill was nevertheless recommended.Footnote 67 Undén gave the same recommendation in a June 1946 parliamentary debate, in which he stressed the significance of purposeful international collaboration and the lack of alternatives to the United Nations, as follows:
It may take a long time before the United Nations have [sic] acquired the efficiency and the stability that are essential to success, and it is not impossible, of course, that this new League may fail and collapse in a terrible Ragnarök. It is not difficult to be a pessimist, but we have greater need for a little hopefulness and confidence in the sound common sense of humanity.Footnote 68
The debate that followed in both chambers of the Riksdag was summarised by a participant who said that the lack of faith in UN effectiveness, as expressed on all sides, gave rise to an uncontroversial debate with neither salient expectations nor apprehensions.Footnote 69 The bill was passed without being put to a vote, although some speakers would have liked to prolong the application process and one legislator announced he would not cast a favourable vote.Footnote 70 Some participants wanted to assign Sweden the role of acting as ‘democracy's fearless outpost’ in ‘this, alas, rather dubious league’. Others resolved to ‘plead the cause of justice, the only “forcible language” that a small state has at its command’.Footnote 71 The social democratic lawyer Vilhelm Lundstedt presciently described the United Nations as a ‘negotiation centre’, a necessary surrogate for effective peace machinery. ‘Spiritual struggles within the United Nations’, he declared, ‘may have any degree of intensity; yet, they aim at being a remedy for the prevention of what is more serious, struggles outside the United Nations, i.e. war between nations.’Footnote 72 With regard to the consequences of UN membership for Sweden, the liberal newspaper Göteborgs Handels- och Sjöfartstidning observed that ‘behind the pleasing unity of the parliamentary parties, it is not difficult to descry [catch sight of] a secret satisfaction at international solidarity being more of a fiction than a reality, and we still have our neutrality safe and sound’.Footnote 73
After the foreign affairs committee had voted to permit the government to take measures to join the United Nations, Undén provided the Swedish representatives in Paris, Washington, London, Moscow and Shanghai/Nanking with a list of three questions to submit to their accrediting governments: (1) Would the government vote for the approval of Swedish membership? (2) If yes, would the Swedish application be considered independently, without being linked to the outcome of other applications? (3) Would the application have a chance to succeed even if submitted after 15 July, the deadline set by the Security Council?Footnote 74 The responses were all positive, although only France said it would back Sweden in every respect. The UK, US and Chinese governments recommended submitting an early application, whereas the Soviet answer was not delivered until 17 July. The US government did not want to bind itself to unconditional support ‘if a situation should arise where someone would move for the postponement of all applications’. The Soviets suggested the vote on Sweden would indeed be linked to other applications.Footnote 75
Parallel to this initiative, the US government verbally appealed to the Swedish government to apply for membership in the UN before 15 July if possible, and by 1 August at the latest. The division head for northern European affairs in the State Department, Hugh S. Cumming, Jr., remarked that Sweden was the first country to be approached in this way, and that it would be made clear to the Russians that Sweden had never discussed the issue of accession to the United Nations with the United States. The feeling was that the Swedish government's recent inquiry would not even be mentioned.Footnote 76 When Sweden's application failed to be submitted, an official who emphasised that he was speaking on behalf of the highest level in the State Department, made it clear to the Swedish minister in Washington that the United States had done everything possible to ‘grease the rails’ for Sweden's accession, and that his country would ‘feel very disappointed’ if no application were forthcoming. The spokesperson even suggested that, in the event the Soviet Union were to couple the Swedish candidature with those of Albania and the People's Republic of Mongolia, the United States would be prepared to accept the latter two as new members. However, the United States cautioned that by waiting with its application, Sweden risked being lumped together with Hitler's former satellites and might also be made a party to applications from the Baltic states, which the United States could not to be expected to view in the same light as applications from Albania and Mongolia.Footnote 77 In order to be able to plan their international strategy, the State Department directed several inquiries to the Swedes, asking whether or not they would apply for membership in 1946.Footnote 78 On 3 August of the same year the Swedish foreign ministry ordered its diplomatic representation to announce that Sweden would probably file its application before 16 August. Once again, the reaction was a request for ‘precise information as soon as possible on the Swedish plans’.Footnote 79
In view of Sweden's satisfactory relations with the Soviet Union and the on-going trade negotiations between both countries, Undén had been optimistic about his country's accession to the United Nations.Footnote 80 Once the ambiguous Soviet answer to the Swedish inquiry had been received, he opted to bide his time for some weeks, and ‘then take the risk of applying for accession without a clear answer from the Soviet Union’. The positive signal at the time was the report of UN Secretary-General Trygve Lie, delivered to Undén on 23 July at Bromma airport in Stockholm. Arriving directly from talks in Moscow with Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov and his deputy Andrey Vyshinsky, Lie gave an account of attitudes in line with the Soviet answer to Sweden. However, he was ‘struck by the favourable way Stalin expressed himself about Sweden’. Stalin also seemed to agree that Sweden's application should be approved without taking into consideration the status of other applications – a view Lie recounted at his meeting with Undén, and one that Molotov, according to Lie, despite a troubled look, had failed to comment on.Footnote 81 Another participant at the meeting in Moscow noted that ‘Lie had explicitly asked Stalin if the Russian side would set any qualifications for Swedish accession, to which Stalin responded in the negative’.Footnote 82 For their part, the Swedes explicitly informed the Soviets about the answers given to their inquiry by the other powers, including the US reservation about the Swedish request in case of general adjournment.Footnote 83 On 5 August Undén called the Soviet minister in Stockholm, Ilya Tchernychev, to his office and informed him that the Swedish government had decided to apply for membership in the UN and would presumably make a formal announcement that week. He thanked the Soviets for their answer to his inquiry and said that his government ‘did not expect any complications for Sweden's part’. In case this estimation proved wrong, he added, ‘there was always the possibility to recall the application as a last resort’.Footnote 84
The next day this information was transmitted to the Swedish diplomats in the capitals of the five permanent member countries of the Security Council and to those at Reykjavík, Dublin and Lisbon. Governments in these cities had recently applied for membership in the United Nations and had previously had related discussions with Sweden.Footnote 85 The Irish and Portuguese saw Sweden as a strong candidate that improved the chances of a bloc of ex-neutrals being accepted by Moscow.Footnote 86
The formal decision to apply for membership in the United Nations was made during a cabinet meeting on 9 August 1946.Footnote 87 On that day, Östen Undén sent a telegram to the UN secretary-general, referring to Article 4 of the Charter on admission to membership and expressing ‘the honour, on behalf of His Swedish majesty's Government acting with the consent of the Riksdag, to submit the application of Sweden for membership in the United Nations Organization and to declare her readiness to accept the obligations contained in the Charter’.Footnote 88
Admission and the Wary Steps of a Downsized Delegation
By the time the Swedish request was submitted, the Security Council Committee on the Admission of New Members had already begun its work. The Committee held fourteen meetings between 31 July and 20 August, submitting its report to the Security Council on 28 August.Footnote 89 The Swedish application was discussed at three meetings during that period. A question raised by the Poles about the character of Swedish neutrality was omitted from the report after a memorandum from the Secretariat pointed out that the Swedish constitution did not prescribe permanent neutrality. The Soviet Union was not initially listed among the countries supportive of Sweden's application. Later the Soviets were characterised as having an ‘open mind’ and reserving the right to ‘speak later’.Footnote 90 The deputy Soviet commissar for foreign affairs, Vladimir Dekanozov, planted a seed for possible future obstruction by commenting, ‘somebody could bring up Sweden's policy during the war’.Footnote 91
Nevertheless, the final document was to the benefit of Sweden:
The delegates of the US, UK, China, Netherlands, Brazil, France and Poland endorsed the application of Sweden for membership in the United Nations, stressing the long and peaceful relations their governments had enjoyed with that country, its democratic institutions, and the humanitarian help given by Sweden to refugees during the war. They deemed her qualified and willing to fulfil all obligations contained in the United Nations Charter.
The delegate of Mexico described the friendly relations that existed between his country and Sweden and praised the valuable attention given Mexican nationals by Sweden during the war when Sweden represented the Mexican interests in Germany and other Axis-dominated territories . . . .
Conclusions: In view of the material placed before the Committee and the ensuing discussion, it was considered that sufficient basis existed for the members of the Security Council to reach a decision . . . .
Attitudes of Delegations: The application was supported by the delegates of the US, Mexico, UK, Brazil, China, France, the Netherlands, Poland and USSR.Footnote 92
When the final decision to recommend the approval of Swedish membership in the Security Council was made on 28 and 29 August, Egypt was one of those countries voting in favour of Sweden. The only country to abstain was Australia, which had lobbied unsuccessfully to have the General Assembly – not the Security Council – pass on all new applications for membership.Footnote 93
A Swedish observer at the meetings noted that the atmosphere was similar to ‘armistice negotiations between different coalitions at war’, rather than characteristic of a discussion among allies, with one exception:
During the discussion of Sweden's application, a mood of relief and alleviation spread through the Council hall. Council members seemed to take great satisfaction in being able to speak positively about an applicant without the risk of being contradicted. While there was also agreement on the applications of Afghanistan and Iceland, there were no comparable discussions about these countries.Footnote 94
While the three countries cited above were endorsed by the Security Council, Albania, Mongolia, Jordan, Ireland and Portugal were not approved for various reasons. In contrast to later years, when the United States refused to negotiate admissions to the United Nations, it was the Soviet Union that prevented a more universal solution in 1946.Footnote 95
The positive recommendation of the Security Council was received without enthusiasm in Sweden: public opinion remained disinterested.Footnote 96 The chief of the political division of the Swedish foreign ministry, Sven Grafström, noted in his diary that confirmation by the General Assembly was now merely a formality.Footnote 97 The Swedish government did not follow the suggestion of UN Secretary-General Lie that it appoint a representative empowered to sign the instrument of adherence.Footnote 98 Rather, it decided to limit the credentials of its minister in Washington, Herman Eriksson, ‘to act on behalf of His Majesty's Government in all matters pertaining to the question of Sweden's adherence to the United Nations before the General Assembly at the second part of its first session’.Footnote 99 Undén wished to sign the instrument of adherence himself once the admission of Sweden had been formalised.Footnote 100
The General Assembly unanimously approved the Security Council's positive recommendations on 9 November and admitted Afghanistan, Iceland and Sweden to membership of the United Nations.Footnote 101 Sweden's admission, it was noted in the labour press at home, ‘was prepared in a splendid way by the Danish minister in Washington, Henrik Kauffmann’.Footnote 102 He had characterised Sweden as ‘the window of a free world’ in the Second World War, and he maintained that Denmark had ‘received help from Sweden in more ways than one, and to a larger extent than is usually known’.Footnote 103 By contrast, the speech of his Norwegian colleague, Wilhelm Morgenstierne, was seen as ‘not as green and fresh as would have been desirable at this historical occasion for Norden’.Footnote 104 This referred to Morgenstierne's proclamation that a Nordic bloc had never existed and that none of the Nordic countries had ‘any desire to form such a bloc’.Footnote 105 When confronted by Johan Beck-Friis, the Swedish minister in Oslo, who had stated that newspaper reports gave the impression of ‘a certain difference in warmth’ in the contributions of Kauffmann and Morgenstierne, the Norwegian foreign minister, Halvard Lange, explained that he himself had written the Norwegian speech and that there had been an agreement between the two countries not to mention Sweden's help during the war, which Kauffmann had unilaterally broken.Footnote 106 In fact, the minutes of the Norwegian delegation refer to a preliminary agreement between Lie, Lange and Kauffmann according to which Lange was to hold a short speech to which Kauffmann merely was to concur. However, it was also agreed to consult the President of the General Assembly, Paul-Henri Spaak, on this procedure,Footnote 107 and Kauffmann prepared a manuscript from which he did not substantially depart in his actual speech.Footnote 108 By contrast, Lange, a returnee from a German concentration camp, had dropped out the day before the speech was to be held due to problems with his schedule.Footnote 109 Lange's biographer suggests that, despite strong Nordic ties, ‘Norden slipped, so to speak, out of his hands’ in an international environment in which the United Nations and later NATO represented the most significant political tasks.Footnote 110
Three days after Sweden's admission to the United Nations, an extraordinary cabinet meeting was called to appoint the Swedish delegation. It consisted of Foreign Minister Undén, Minister of Supply Axel Gjöres and the minister to Washington, Herman Eriksson. The foreign ministry's acting specialist on international law, Gunnar Sandberg, and the acting head of the UN division, Östen Lundborg, were designated as experts (Lundberg also served as secretary). Additionally, Sverker Åström and Olof Rydbeck were named as two assistant secretaries; both later became permanent Swedish representatives to the UN.Footnote 111
Despite sending a few high-ranking principal delegates, the Swedish approach was reserved. Staffing of the delegation fell short of the originally estimated twelve to fourteen members.Footnote 112 The delegation's concept was articulated in the guideline: ‘we are newcomers who now appear at an on-going meeting that has already made a fair amount of progress in its discussions and its work’. Eriksson's quest for broader representation in order to handle all of the expectations placed upon Sweden and to avoid the impression of half-hearted participation was to no avail.Footnote 113 When the under-secretary of state, Karl-Ivan Westman replied to Eriksson he pointed to Sweden's commitment ‘in the field of foreign policy to use “the middle way”’. Westman added that according to his experience, ‘at the end of the day, much does not usually come out of the big noise at such conventions’.Footnote 114 Undén conducted the Swedish delegation circumspectly and did not map out particular instructions in advance.Footnote 115 The room reserved for Sweden at Lake Success, the site of the UN's provisional headquarters, remained practically unused.Footnote 116 A low-key approach was signalled upon the arrival of the delegation:
‘We are here,’ said Mr. Unden, ‘to familiarize ourselves with the procedure and the whole machinery. We are not prepared to take a full share in the activities.’ He only smiled when asked whether he thought the admission of Sweden, Iceland and Afghanistan would change the present alignment of United Nations members. ‘You must wait and see,’ said Herman Eriksson, Swedish Minister to the United States, who was at the field to receive the arriving delegates.Footnote 117
On the morning of 19 November 1946, in a ceremony lasting three minutes, the chief delegates of the newly-admitted member states signed the instruments of adherence to the UN Charter in the presence of Secretary-General Lie, eight assistant secretaries-general and the president of the General Assembly, Paul-Henri Spaak.Footnote 118 In a subsequent plenary welcome meeting Undén said that Sweden was often referred to in the United States as ‘the land of the middle way’, and that this metaphor connoted ‘methods . . . for the solution of domestic problems, especially in the social field’, which was also to define Sweden's attitude to the solution of international problems.Footnote 119 The fact that Undén gave his speech in French, despite being equally fluent in English, caused speculation about a show of independence from East and West.Footnote 120
After the formal admission of Sweden and Iceland, the Nordic delegations held a banquet in New York on Denmark's initiative.Footnote 121 On this occasion Undén blundered – perhaps in response to Lange's speech that Morgenstierne had read two weeks earlier – by addressing the great discrepancy between Norway and Sweden during the war and Sweden's astonishment that Norway was taken by surprise when attacked by Germany, although he also suggested that military preparation would not have made a difference. Moreover, he underlined that Nordic cooperation did not represent a political bloc, and that Sweden had adapted to the prevailing circumstances and sought such contact as was natural.Footnote 122
The press noted that ‘Sweden's repeatedly declared refusal to join any political bloc, be it Eastern European or Western democratic, has been manifest in an interesting manner in the recently completed UN meeting’. With a balance in the most controversial issues of three votes with the Slavic countries and four with the Anglo-Saxon countries, the Swedish position seemed dubious to non-socialist observers.Footnote 123 In subsequent years it was noted that Sweden paradoxically tended to vote along more ‘Western’ lines than NATO members Denmark and Norway, due to the lack of a need to demonstrate its idiosyncrasies. Overall, a cautious Swedish approach to the United Nations and international politics prevailed while Undén was foreign minister.
Conclusion
Sweden has a reputation for being an ardent supporter of the United Nations, and Dag Hammarskjöld, the organisation's second secretary-general (1953–1961), remains the beloved patron saint of the world body. According to established Swedish rhetoric, the country is the ‘best friend’ of the United Nations.Footnote 124 Outside observers have glorified Sweden as representing ‘the ideal of what constituted good international behaviour’, with particular reference to its profile at the United Nations.Footnote 125 However, there are few in-depth studies of Swedish policy toward the United Nations, and the details of Sweden's accession are virtually unknown. This void may have to do in part with Sweden's awkward first encounter with the United Nations against the backdrop of the country's contradictory grand narratives of neutrality and UN enthusiasm.
In addressing the research gap on Sweden's accession to the United Nations, the present article finds that a discourse on Swedish moral superiority and Sweden as the ideal member of the world organisation already existed at the time of the Second World War. However, in view of the fledgling United Nation's character as an organisation of a strained military alliance, the official Swedish position remained restrained. The complex approach of post-war Foreign Minister Östen Undén is representative for Sweden as a whole: while agreeing with those who regarded non-belligerence as a morally unassailable position in contrast to the dirty business of war, Undén was wise enough to avoid a self-righteous demeanour vis-à-vis those who confronted Nazi Germany and the Axis powers. He would in fact have been willing to abandon neutrality for a functioning system of collective security. Rather than being an aim in itself, neutrality represented a second-best means toward security, inferior as it was to a guarded world peace. As it became increasingly clear that the United Nations would not become such a protective force, the world organisation lost significance for Sweden and the policy of neutrality re-emerged as a cornerstone of the country's foreign and security policy.
A measure of Swedish exceptionality is evident in the intractable way in which the country pursued UN membership, keeping its distance from other accession candidates and from US offers for assistance, and withholding its application for membership until the Security Council Committee on the Admission of New Members had already worked for one and a half weeks. There was a striking transparency in Swedish diplomats’ approach to the Soviet Union, communicating openly about the prospects of UN accession as seen from Stockholm and Washington. When Sweden entered the United Nations, it did so with a much smaller delegation than observers anticipated and one that was not yet prepared to tackle matters of substance. Rather than acting as enthusiastic UN supporters upon their admission in 1946, the Swedes used the United Nations as an arena to manifest their otherness in world affairs. While this demonstration was paired with ample indifference at the time, the United Nations increasingly emerged as a significant transmitter of Swedish foreign policy in the Cold War.
