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Swedish Narratives of the Second World War: A European Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2008

JOHAN ÖSTLING
JOHAN ÖSTLING*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Lund University, Box 2074, 220 02 Lund, Sweden; Johan.Ostling@hist.lu.se.
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Abstract

This paper outlines the dominant post-war narratives of the Second World War in Europe. Drawing from the expanding fields of memory and history, a general pattern in the European interpretations of the war years emerges: whereas the experiences and recollections of the war were narrated within a patriotic framework until the 1980s, a significant shift towards a universalistic interpretation has occurred in the last two decades. Although Sweden's wartime experiences differed profoundly from most other similar countries, it is argued that the transformation of Swedish narratives of the Second World War reflected general European tendencies after 1945. Special attention is paid to the emergence in the 1990s of a universalistic understanding of the war, and how this change interplayed with a more general criticism of the foundations of post-war Swedish society.

Récits suédois de la deuxième guerre mondiale: une perspective européenne

Cet article présente les récits dominants de l'après deuxième guerre mondiale en Europe. A partir du champ croissant de la mémoire et de l'histoire, un modèle général dans les interprétations européennes des années de guerre émerge: tandis que les expériences et les souvenirs de la guerre sont racontés dans un cadre patriotique jusqu'aux années 1980, une modification significative vers une interprétation universaliste est apparue dans les deux dernières décennies. Même si les expériences de la Suède pendant la guerre diffèrent fortement de ceux de la plupart des pays similaires, il est avancé que la transformation des récits suédois de la deuxième guerre mondiale reflète des tendances européennes générales après 1945. Une attention particulière est portée à l'émergence d'une compréhension universaliste de la guerre dans les années 1990 et à comment ce changement a interagi avec une critique plus générale des fondations de la société suédoise de l'après-guerre.

Schwedische erzählungen vom zweiten weltkrieg: eine europäische perspektive

Dieser Artikel ordnet die Nachkriegsnarrative, die nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg in Schweden entstanden, in einen europäischen Zusammenhang ein. Indem der Artikel vom expandierenden Feld der Erinnerung und der Geschichte ausgeht, entwickelt er ein Modell europäischer Interpretationen der Kriegsjahre. Während die Erfahrungen und Erinnerungen des Krieges bis in die 1980er Jahre im Rahmen eines patriotischen Narrativs erzählt wurden, fand in den letzten zwei Jahrzehnten eine signifikante Verschiebung zu einer universalistischen Interpretation statt. Obschon Schwedens Kriegserfahrungen grundverschieden von den meisten ähnlichen Ländern waren, spiegelte der Wandel schwedischer Nachkriegsnarrative diese allgemeinen europäischen Tendenzen nach 1945 wider. Die Entstehung eines universalistischen Verständnis des Zweiten Weltkriegs in den 1990er Jahren und der Zusammenhang dieser Entwicklung mit einer fundamentalen Kritik der Grundlagen der schwedischen Nachkriegsgesellschaft findet dabei besondere Beachtung.

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Contemporary European History , Volume 17 , Issue 2 , May 2008, pp. 197 - 211
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

More than sixty years after the end of the Second World War, the shadows of the great European catastrophe seem to be longer than ever. Indeed, the battle over the meaning and elucidation of the conflict still rages. During the last decades, the legacy of the war has sparked vigorous debate across the continent on how to interpret the past. In France and Belgium heated discussions about collaborators and resistance fighters broke out in the 1980s, while in Austria and Italy a belated examination of the history of the war years slowly began. The end of the Cold War, moreover, seemed to have brought forgotten memories and suppressed experiences back to life. In neutral countries such as Switzerland and Sweden, appeasement, foreign policy and financial relationships with Nazi Germany were debated in the 1990s. The Second World War also entered public discourse in many parts of eastern Europe – from Kragujevac in Yugoslavia to Jedwabne in Poland. Everywhere the debates left a pungent savour of hypocrisy, as if the people of Europe had been living with a misleading history of the war for many years.

In this article I shall discuss Swedish narratives of the Second World War within a larger international framework. First I shall outline the most dominant tendencies in and major transformations of the memory culture of post-war Europe. Based on this overall perspective, I shall move on to the main subject of this article, the case of Sweden.

Patriotic narratives

Today, at some distance from the most hot-tempered contentions concerning the war, a general historiographical pattern has emerged: these were all confrontations between different, nationally shaped narratives of the Second World War. These divergences between an older and a newer interpretation of the war years have recently developed into a particular and most vital field of research. Of course, the studies differ in their empirical and theoretical approaches, but they share an interest in the Second World War as an element that has constituted national self-understanding and historical consciousness in European countries throughout the post-war era.Footnote 1 All these accounts try to explore the tension between the experience of the second half of the twentieth century and the memory of the first half. ‘This sharp contrast often seems mind boggling – it runs through individual life experiences as much as through the collective history of the age’, as the historians Konrad H. Jarausch and Michael Geyer have put it.Footnote 2

The historian Pierre Lagrou belonged to the pioneers. In the mid-1990s he analysed the way in which a patriotic memory was formed in Belgium, France and the Netherlands following the end of the war. Of utmost importance was the glorification of the resistance movement, which resulted in the experiences of those who did not fit into the national narrative – Jews, communists, collaborators – being suppressed and neglected. In short, the memory of the war was nationalised. Only after several decades, when the reconstruction and integration of post-war society was accomplished, could the monolithic memory slowly dissolve.Footnote 3

In a similar way Claus Bryld and Anette Warring, two Danish historians, examined how a hegemonic narrative of the German occupation of Denmark in 1940–5 emerged in the early years after the war. In its character, this ‘basic narrative of the occupation’ (grundfortælling om besættelsestiden) was markedly nationalistic. A leading principle was that the Danes had fully supported the resistance; of course, a distinction could be made between active and passive opposition, but with the exception of a few traitors the whole Danish people had joined in the struggle against the foreign invaders. Under the influence of the approaching Cold War, the narrative gradually acquired a more mythical shape: good versus evil, democracy versus dictatorship, universalism versus racism. This national interpretation dominated textbooks, television programmes and historical jubilees during the entire post-war period, and has strongly underpinned Danish national identity.Footnote 4

The various national narratives that Lagrou, Bryld, Warring and others revealed had many features in common: France, Belgium and the Netherlands shared to a large extent Denmark's destiny during and after the Second World War. But many other European countries had utterly different experiences of the war. For some, the war brought about a human and material obliteration without precedent; for others the destruction was almost non-existent. Some countries were morally strengthened by the war; others went through national humiliation. A few neutral countries did not take part in the war itself, but were still profoundly affected by it.Footnote 5

Despite this diversity almost all national narratives of the Second World War fit into a larger European pattern. The French-German historian Etienne Fran ois has identified the common elements in this historical landscape. Fundamental to them all, in both liberal democracies in western Europe and communist dictatorships in eastern Europe, was the victory over Nazi Germany. In descriptions of the end of the war and the liberation, national unity was often stressed. This newly won liberty opened a door to the future and marked the beginning of a new, bright chapter in history. A common characteristic in most national narratives was the glorification of the resistance movement, while in countries that had been liberated by foreign troops, domestic efforts tended to be highly praised. In addition, the ‘heroisation’ of the war was another common denominator in the narratives – not only were charismatic victors such as Charles de Gaulle, Winston Churchill and Josip Broz Tito designated as heroes, but also brave partisans and members of the resistance.Footnote 6

Etienne Fran ois has characterised the national narratives of Second World War during the first decades after 1945 as patriotic. This is perhaps a somewhat misleading notion, since the narratives were not primarily permeated with chauvinistic rhetoric or even love of one's own country. ‘Patriotic’, however, refers to the mere fact that the narratives in this period defended the cause, the people and the actions of a nation during the war. According to the patriotic interpretation, the victory over Nazism could essentially be ascribed to national achievements, either in the form of the resistance movement, superiority in forces or a more advanced social system. The view was nationally dictated, and the arguments drew their force from a self-righteous ethos: the war years had meant hardship and suffering, but, thanks to the ideals and virtues we believed in, we gained strength and managed to subdue the aggressive invading power. In countries which had had strong Nazi or fascist organisations, for example Germany, Austria and Italy, these currents in their political cultures were often regarded as foreign elements, as alien powers that had gained control over their own people.Footnote 7

Without neglecting the important differences between eastern and western Europe, the great majority of the national narratives of the Second World War were united in a patriotism which justified the present pattern of society and vindicated the dominant ideological viewpoints. In many countries the war had demolished the social community and diluted human trust. The Manichaean heroism of the patriotic narratives offered a remedy, not least in re-establishing the credentials of the nation-state, which had proved disastrously incompetent in protecting the lives of its citizens during the war.Footnote 8 On this matter the historian Tony Judt has argued that Europeans had to handle a complicated balancing act: they had to revitalise the continent economically and politically by holding back the near past, whereas a cultural and moral invigoration at the same time required that they learned from this very past.Footnote 9

In conclusion, post-war national narratives of the Second World War were modelled on similar prototypes. First, the patriotic interpretation helped to legitimise certain values. In west European democracies, where anti-totalitarianism became an ideological foundation during the Cold War, political opponents were successfully stigmatised. In eastern Europe, by contrast, anti-fascism was at the core of the patriotic staging. Second, the capacity to defend and mobilise the nation was at the hub of all narratives. The resistance could draw its strength from personal, national or ideological convictions, but in the end the mutual struggle had benefited the public good, whether the general aspiration was communism, democracy or peace. Finally, as official patriotic narratives, they were all narrated within a national framework. They could of course be part of a wider international context, but the nation-state was the origin and the goal of patriotism. As a consequence, the Holocaust was not regarded as a central element in the narratives of the Second World War, particularly since a large number of the victims, the Roma as well as the Jews, lacked a nation-state of their own.Footnote 10

Universal narratives

Gradually, however, patriotic narratives lost their influence throughout Europe. Consequently, once these former monolithic narratives were challenged, new or previously suppressed interpretations gained ground. In the Federal Republic of Germany – in many ways an exception due to its history as the successor of the Third Reich – a new attitude towards its own dark past was perceived in the early 1960s, but the German lessons remained exclusively German and strengthened rather than softened the self-righteous tone of other parts of Europe. German Vergangenheitsbewältigung (the process of coming to terms with the past) probably had the effect that the Nazis continued to be seen as primarily a German problem, and other European countries could remain onlookers. Hence more deep-seated national confrontations were delayed.Footnote 11

However, as a general rule the leitmotifs of the national narratives of the Second World War have undergone a fundamental change in the last decades: from patriotism to universalism. If heroic deeds and brave resistance were in the forefront of interpretations until the 1980s, the new universalistic narratives have grievous, traumatic experiences as their point of departure. As nothing else the Holocaust became the starting point in this universalistic staging. The extermination of European Jewry had already been known during the war, but it was not until the 1980s and 1990s that the Holocaust became the centre of attraction and offered the predominant moral lesson of the Second World War. In a world which had experienced Stalinism, fascism and imperialism, the Holocaust marked a dark century's deepest abyss.Footnote 12

Patriotic narratives were vigorously contested in the 1980s and 1990s. Throughout Europe heated public controversies broke out surrounding issues related to the Second World War, from the Historikerstreit in West Germany to the debates on the Vichy regime in France, la Resistenza in Italy and Kurt Waldheim in Austria. Suddenly the legacy of the war years turned out to be a rich source for political and moral discussions, a challenging question for politicians, intellectuals and historians. At the same time victims gained entrance to the public sphere, and many of history's malefactors were brought to justice decades after the end of the war. The Eichmann trial in Jerusalem in 1961 and the Auschwitz trial in Frankfurt in 1963–5 had anticipated the legal proceedings in the 1980s and 1990s. Furthermore, companies, banks and states were forced to repay profits illegitimately gained in the 1930s and 1940s. An additional component of the new attitude towards the Second World War was the emergence of an official culture of grief and commemoration, not least paying tribute to the memory of the murdered Jews. With monuments, exhibitions and memorial days, the Second World War in general and the Holocaust in particular became the centre of public attention. States, organisations and individuals took the blame on themselves for crimes committed during the war. The Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust in 2000 marked the final breakthrough for this new universalistic narrative.Footnote 13

Sweden and the Second World War: small-state realism

According to its own self-understanding, post-war Sweden was by all accounts a unique country. With its gradual, peaceful evolutionary character, modern Swedish history had certainly diverged from the brutal developments on the war-ridden European continent. This view was not least based on the mere fact that Sweden, as with only a few major countries, had been spared the horrors of two world wars.

The aftermath of the war was by no means as turbulent in Sweden as it was in many other countries. With the exception of a few minor trials, no legal action was taken against former Nazis. In addition, no resistance movement aimed at monopolising the interpretation of the war and no occupation power dictated post-war conditions. The Second World War, on balance, never became a part of the official national memory culture.Footnote 14

Nevertheless, a powerful narrative of Sweden and the Second World War emerged in the late 1940s in the wake of the peace. As a hegemonic interpretation, it was to dominate throughout the entire post-war era and could be characterised as the small-state realistic narrative. According to this, Sweden, as a small state, had no choice but to adapt its responses to the aggressive German power. This was an indisputable postulate in the dominating Swedish interpretation. However, Sweden's concessions were limited, and the price paid – having to react to the Nazi aggression – must be attributed to the threat of a brutal occupation. The policy of neutrality, in conclusion, had been for the lasting benefit of the nation, its neighbouring countries and peace itself. ‘The role of a small state gave Sweden moral absolution’, as the historian Alf W. Johansson wrote in a paradigmatic article on small-state realism as a self-understanding. ‘All the difficult questions which the policy of concessions posed about the Swedish social ethos during the war years, about the will to resist and submission, about fidelity to one's own ideals and ideological principles were swept under the carpet by the triumph of small-state realism.’Footnote 15

Small-state realism was at the core of the national identity in the post-war period; in fact, small-state realism became Sweden's patriotic narrative of the Second World War. As with many other patriotic interpretations, the hegemonic phase coincided with the Cold War years. Self-righteousness was a salient feature – admittedly, Sweden had in some ways deviated from strict neutrality, but on the whole the Swedish policy had been that of resistance and a major effort for peace. ‘We have made our contribution, we have struggled in our own way’, the Swedish prime minister Per Albin Hansson concluded in a speech on the very last day of the war. In that way, he proved that not only had his wartime coalition government acted successfully but that the whole social order and way of life in Sweden was superior.Footnote 16

Despite the lack of outspoken heroism, the Swedish narrative comprised elements similar to those of other European countries. According to the US sociologist Jeffrey C. Alexander, small-state realism could be regarded as a ‘progressive narrative’, where the evil of National Socialism was located in a historical epoch which unquestionably belonged to the past.Footnote 17 By this means the coalition government seemed to have been a stable guarantor for peace and sovereignty, and its policy of neutrality had spared Sweden war and occupation. Moreover, Sweden's humanitarian efforts in war-torn Europe were emphasised, a proud and important tradition which continued in the reconstruction of the continent after 1945 and in an ever-increasing international commitment in the 1950s and 1960s.

The structure of the patriotic narrative also required a set of scapegoats. The most obvious ones were, on the one hand, the Quislings and fifth columnists, that is, Swedish Nazis and communists with dubious loyalties and therefore potential traitors. The other group of whipping boys consisted of candid opponents of National Socialism in the fields of publishing, culture and intellectual debate, including Torgny Segerstedt, Ture Nerman and Karl Gerhard. With their treacherous, unbalanced hostility towards government policy, they were seen as conceited idealists who threatened to bring Sweden into the war.

As a dominating narrative, the small-state realistic interpretation recurred whenever Sweden and the Second World War was a theme. Within this framework memoirs and biographies were written, and the perspective permeated textbooks, films and television series. By the same token, historical science shared the small-state realistic understanding of the war. Under a large research project at the department of history at the University of Stockholm, ‘Sweden During the Second World War’ (Sverige under andra världskriget, SUAV), some twenty doctoral theses were published in the 1970s. A whole range of new empirical fields was analysed, but in retrospect the project stands out as incomplete and limited in scope. The historian Wilhelm Carlgren's thorough study of Swedish foreign policy between 1939 and 1945 (published in 1973)Footnote 18 did not fill the gap or challenge the basic perspective. On the contrary, the historical analyses confirmed the small-state realistic narrative. Refugee policy, for example, was a field of research, but the moral implications of Sweden having played any part in the destruction of European Jewry were never discussed; this, however, was in accordance with the objectivistic, non-normative ideals of the day. As a consequence, the Holocaust was not considered a part of Sweden's history during the Second World War.Footnote 19

The small-state realistic interpretation was considerably strengthened during the post-war era by the Swedish policy of neutrality. To criticise the small-state realism of the Second World War was to criticise the small-state realism of the Cold War. This conclusion does not contradict the idea – promoted, for instance, by the historian Bo Stråth – that neutrality was partly a reconstruction after the event and that the doctrine itself did not take shape until the beginning of the 1950s. The moral of the small-state realistic narrative was a plea for fundamental principles in post-war Swedish society: peace and security, sovereignty and neutrality, welfare, modernity and progress.Footnote 20

Swedish counter-narratives

In spite of the power and dominance of the small-state realistic interpretation during the post-war era, a couple of distinct counter-narratives could be discerned. They were all so weak and occurred only so sporadically between 1945 and 1990 that it is hard to talk of continuous narration. Instead, they resembled what can be characterised as counter-voices, diverging expressions that never managed to enter the public sphere.

In terms of structure and form, however, they had much in common with the hegemonic small-state realistic narrative. In both cases, certain victims, heroes, enemies and scapegoats were at the heart of the interpretation. Moreover, the master narrative as well as the counter-narratives represented a particular set of core values, often expressed in a geographic orientation or ideological loyalty. Finally, a specific narrator can be identified, that is, a person or a group that incarnated the narrative. All counter-narratives had a common denominator in their rejection of the small-state realistic interpretation, often as criticism of both Swedish policy during the war and national self-righteousness after 1945. Sweden was regularly portrayed as a small and petty country, unable to see the larger currents that shaped the time.

The moral counter-narrative

A moral counter-narrative was observable here and there during the post-war period. The leitmotif of this critical interpretation was that the coalition government with its concessions to Nazi Germany had pursued a morally irresponsible politics, whose only purpose had been unconditionally to keep Sweden out of the great power conflict. The guiding star had been unscrupulous pragmatism. The wartime government was accused of not being capable of seeing the Second World War for what it really had been: a moral struggle between democracy and dictatorship, liberty and oppression, good and evil. On the contrary, leading Swedish politicians acted in a cowardly manner and were narrow-mindedly nationalistic, and so used the fundamental values of democracy as bargaining chips. According to this moral narrative, the policy of concession only served to prolong the war and prevented the world from drawing attention to Nazi crimes.

An explicit, passionate anti-Nazi stance was at the core of the moral counter-narrative, visible not least in its defence of democracy, the rule of law and human dignity. In this moral staging, prominent wartime anti-Nazis such as Torgny Segerstedt, Eyvind Johnson and Amelie Posse-Brá were the leading actors, as were humanitarian heroes such as Raoul Wallenberg and Folke Bernadotte. The scapegoats were the coalition government and the so-called roddare (‘oarsmen’) – those who swiftly and smoothly had changed sides by the end of the war.

Many of the leading wartime opponents of National Socialism did what they could to promulgate a moral counter-narrative in the early post-war years. Immediately after the end of the war, newspapers such as Göteborgs Handels- och Sjöfarts-Tidning and Expressen acted as its mouthpiece. In other papers, individual journalists and publicists embraced the same opinion, among them the foreign editor of the leading Dagens Nyheter, Johannes Wickman, who had fiercely criticised official Swedish policies during the war. In addition, a small number of Jewish intellectuals belonged to this group. Hugo Valentin, a historian and writer, had already in October 1942 drawn public attention in Sweden to the ongoing Nazi mass killings in continental Europe. He and other Jewish writers continued to cover the issue in journals such as Judisk krönika and Judisk tidskrift after 1945.Footnote 21

A moral undercurrent was to be seen in isolated documentary novels and television programmes from the late 1960s onwards, from Per Olof Enquist's Legionärerna to Kenne Fant's book on the wartime foreign minister, Christian Günther. A more fiery debate was triggered by the US television production Holocaust, which was broadcast in Sweden in spring 1979. Some commentators asked whether this theme really concerned a Swedish audience, but a more moral narrative also broke through. The journalist Göran Rosenberg, for example, assiduously launched a counter-narrative of Sweden and the Second World War. In a series of articles in Aftonbladet, ‘Sweden in the Shadow of the Holocaust’, he shed light on the restrictive refugee policy with regard to persecuted Jews and the impact of antisemitism in Swedish society. In a larger perspective, however, the moral counter-narrative was weak and marginal. It was observable here and there during the whole post-war period, but it was only in the 1990s that it managed to challenge the small-state realistic interpretation.Footnote 22

The communist counter-narrative

The communist counter-narrative originated in a Marxist-Leninist interpretation of the Second World War. It shared quite a few features with the moral counter-narrative, most fundamentally in its indignation at the concessions to Nazi Germany and the failed confrontation with the Nazi past after 1945. But the list of crimes did not end there. According to the communist interpretation, fascism had been an upper-class phenomenon, even though Germanophile attitudes had infused large sectors of Swedish society – the royal family and police authorities, the army and high finance. A more important difference between the communist and the moral counter-narratives was the programmatic anti-fascism that underpinned the former. The Second World War formed a part of the greater class struggle and national socialism was simply regarded as an agent of aggressive German capitalism. The communist heroes were either the radical resistance movement who had been fighting the fascists or those who had joined the Red Army in its struggle. During the Cold War, the great role the Soviet Union played in the outcome of the Second World War was usually stressed. Politicians, intellectuals and journalists with radical left-wing inclinations embraced the communist counter-narrative.Footnote 23

In contrast to many other west European countries, the Second World War did not play any major role in the Swedish radical movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Traces of a communist counter-narrative could doubtless be found, but the war was never a driving force in Swedish debates or actions. To conclude, the communist counter-narrative was transmitted in various left-wing circles throughout the post-war period, but it did not have any major impact on Swedish society as a whole.Footnote 24

The ultranationalist counter-narrative

The ultranationalist counter-narrative was the most peripheral in the decades after the end of the war. At the same time chauvinistically Swedish and pro-German, it combined ideals that did not find favour within post-war public discourse. The ultranationalist narrative included a deep-seated understanding of the desires and aspirations of Nazi Germany, an understanding that sometimes was transformed into a dream of the fulfilment of a Swedish–German alliance. Hypocritical politicians and conceited moralists had belittled national values and in the counter-narrative belonged to the stigmatised enemies. Their adversaries played the great national heroes, first and foremost the king, Gustaf V.

Ideologically, the ultranationalist counter-narrative rested on foundations of anti-communism, royalism and patriotism. After the war it showed its loyalty to older Swedish and European traditions. In the war years, the supporters had belonged to Germanophile, right-wing circles (Svenska nationella förbundet and other similar groups), but the number of followers diminished drastically after 1945. In the post-war period, the ultranationalist counter-narrative was narrated in obscure milieus and peripheral journals, in memoirs, diaries and letters, in right-wing national newspapers and publications, and in organisations that still embraced authoritarian nationalism and longed for the coming resurrection of defeated Germany. Biographically it was associated with such persons as Rütger Essén, Einar Åberg and Carl Ernfrid Carlberg. In a wider public sphere, the ultranationalist interpretation was a counter-narrative in its most genuine sense, a terrible reminder of what had been overthrown.Footnote 25

The small-state realistic narrative had taken possession of the collective Swedish memory of the Second World War, and the counter-narratives never managed to burst through. The German historian Nicolas Berg has analysed how ‘memory conflicts’ (Erinnerungskämpfe) took place in the Federal Republic and how dominating opinions on the Third Reich were challenged. In Sweden, too, the master narrative was criticised and rejected in the post-war period, but much greater upheavals were needed to really challenge the small-state realistic interpretation and its position as a hegemonic narrative.Footnote 26

The crisis of consensus and the new consensus

With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, a historical epoch reached its end. More than that, the traditions and objectives that had helped to guide people and societies were called into question when the Cold War ended. Some scholars have spoken of ‘a crisis of the narratives’.Footnote 27

In Sweden, the strong small-state realistic narrative mouldered away during the 1990s. In the preface to Heder och samvete (1991), a hugely influential book that marked the beginning of a new attitude towards Sweden during Second World War, the author, Maria-Pia Boëthius, declared,

This is a history book for those who were born after the war; an indictment, a list of sins and a contribution to the debate. The post-war generation in Sweden knows extraordinarily little about Sweden and the Second World War. This can be a part of our general lack of a sense of history, this can be a conspiracy of silence. Sweden's role during the Second World War was not glorious.Footnote 28

Boéthius's polemical book marked the starting-point of the controversies surrounding the small-state realistic narrative in the 1990s. Older reviewers tended to dismiss her book as a superficial pamphlet, but the younger ones, many of whom were born after the war, were much more enthusiastic. In that respect, Heder och samvete paved the way for a whole range of critical books and articles in the 1990s on everything from Nazi gold to Swedes who had fought for Hitler.Footnote 29 Simultaneously, Swedish historiography on the Second World War shifted focus. A large number of scholarly studies on Swedish antisemitism and racial biology, as well as Sweden's relationship with Nazi Germany and its attitudes to the Holocaust, were published. Explicitly or not, they were united in a moral stance that older academic studies lacked.Footnote 30 As an official confirmation of the general acceptance of the new moral narrative, the prime minister, Göran Persson, in 1997 launched the Levande historia (‘Living History’) project, whose aim was to promote efforts to advance democracy, tolerance and human rights, with the Holocaust as the point of departure.Footnote 31

In spite of the symbolic importance of Boëthius's historical accusation, a prelude to the collective self-examination of the 1990s could already be heard in the late 1980s. As an illustration, Zarah Leander's career in the Third Reich was debated in the press in 1988. During the post-war decades, the Swedish star had not been regarded as a political animal, but rather as a diva, a naive but successful prima donna who had charmed audiences in Nazi Germany and elsewhere. By the end of the 1980s, however, a much more critical narrative prevailed, in which Leander was portrayed as a woman of doubtful reputation who had enjoyed the company of senior Nazis without hesitation.Footnote 32 At the same time, Ingmar Bergman's memoir Laterna Magica had given rise to some reactions after he had admitted his fascination with National Socialism in his youth. A few years later, a book on the Wallenbergs, an important financial dynasty, and their relationship to Nazi Germany also sparked a public debate.Footnote 33

This change in mood must be seen against the backdrop of tendencies in the international theatre in the late 1980s. For instance, the Historikerstreit in West Germany in 1986–8 was thoroughly discussed in Sweden and could have been a stimulus to Swedish self-examination. Other national confrontations, such as the controversies surrounding the Austrian president Kurt Waldheim, the philosopher Martin Heidegger and the French Vichy régime, were also commented on in the media. All in all, these public European disputes in the late 1980s can be seen as harbingers of the intense struggle with the war legacy during the 1990s.Footnote 34

Although it is impossible to establish a specific date when the change took place, the years around 1990 definitely marked the beginning of the gradual transition from a patriotic to a universalistic narrative of the Second World War in Sweden. In essence, the dominating national interpretation underwent the same transformation as in the rest of Europe at the same time. Self-righteousness gave way to self-criticism, national sovereignty to international commitment and security to human dignity. The narrative became eminently moral when the Holocaust became its origin and goal.

In a broader international perspective, certain peculiarities in the Swedish confrontation with the patriotic interpretation stand out. The criticism of the small-state realistic framework coincided and partly overlapped with a more general criticism of the bases of post-war society. In a series of contentions concerning instrumental rationality, eugenic sterilisations and respect for individual freedom, the Swedish welfare state was brought up for discussion. The policy of neutrality and non-alignment, cornerstones of Swedish foreign policy during the Cold War, was portrayed as an exercise in hypocrisy. In general, the 1990s can be regarded as ‘the decade of debates,’ as a time when the whole post-war construction was challenged and discussed.Footnote 35

Not by coincidence, Sweden's confrontations with the small-state realistic narrative ran parallel with a more general examination of post-war society. In Sweden as in other parts of Europe, the patriotic interpretation of the Second World War had lived symbiotically with broader post-war narratives after 1945. The strength of the Swedish interpretation can logically be explained by the fact that it formed a solid basis for the welfare state in the Cold War era, efficiently underpinning an idea of Sweden as a neutral, democratic and flourishing country, where everybody worked for the benefit of the common good and peaceful solutions to conflict were preferred. Furthermore, the small-state realistic understanding could be merged smoothly with the hegemonic master-narrative of modern Sweden to which the Social Democrats and the majority of the centre-right opposition gave expression in the post-war period. Even though this narrative of democracy, welfare and rationalism was challenged from the 1960s onwards (by, in turn, the New Left, the women's movement, the Green movement and new liberal currents), the history of Sweden in the Second World War was never a prime target for their attacks. Small-state realism could remain an important part of the self-understanding, even when the master narrative was called into question.Footnote 36

Nonetheless, it is misleading to interpret the small-state realistic interpretation as ‘a conspiracy of silence’, a cunning form of manipulation of a malignant government. As identity and historical understanding, the patriotic narrative originated in the conclusions that were drawn from experiences of the Second World War in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Equally, the transformation of the patriotic narrative into a universalistic one in the 1990s was facilitated by the fact that the patriotic Swedish interpretation was so universalistic as to its substance. With its progressive character, underscoring universal values such as international solidarity, civil rights and general welfare, much of the content could remain intact even when the structure had changed. To put it differently, the moral of the small-state realism remained when small-state realism itself was discredited.

The crisis of consensus paved the way for a new kind of consensus. The moral narrative that broke through in the early 1990s became more and more hegemonic.Footnote 37 Indeed, these changes reflect a general European development, but it is nevertheless important to take the specific Swedish characteristics into consideration. The new universalistic narrative was not just a historical interpretation; as always, historical narratives have at least as much to do with the present and the future as with the past. Some commentators, including the historian Klas-Göran Karlsson, have seen the development in the light of various Europeanisation processes in Sweden in the 1990s. To be a genuine part of the wider European project – Sweden became a member of the European Union in 1995 – the country ‘also had to come to terms – albeit belatedly – with the unifying experience of war and its symbolism’. Therefore a new approach to the history of Sweden during the war was called for.Footnote 38

Although the emergence of the moral narrative requires multifaceted and nuanced explanations, one thing is certain: the memories of the Second World War continue to spark debates and shape political discourses throughout the continent. In recent years, however, the narratives that for so long dominated post-war Europe have given way to others, in Sweden and elsewhere. The war is not what it once was.

Footnotes

Ibid.
Ibid.

References

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