Scandinavia and the World
Scandinavia and the World

Comments #9865862:


Too real 20 12, 8:34pm

@Nisse_Hult Sweden, as a democracy, was naturally oriented toward the UK and France (and the USA), just like Finland was before the Winter War (and in fact still later, despite huge, obvious complications). However, Sweden couldn't afford to actually join the UK and France because in that case Germany would have tried to occupy Sweden immediately. Would Sweden have actually joined the Allies if it had had more freedom? Hard to say. You could be correct and Sweden would have still done things like it did.

In a manner of speaking the UK and France did help Finland because Stalin was afraid of facing the British and French military, so he was in a hurry to end the war, just in case the UK and France actually started moving. It's a good thing Stalin was paranoid. However, that "help" did leave quite a bitter taste. Sweden was better in promising nothing but deliving a lot of help under the table.

I have read before that initially Hitler ranked Finns below his vague Aryans but above the Slavs. However, I haven't actually bothered to study the issue myself, so for all I know, that could be utterly false information. The Swedes, at least, did separate Finns from the Nordics in their racial studies. If Finland had remained a part of the Kingdom of Sweden, would that have still happened? Who knows. It's a different issue if you do anything with such "knowledge", like Hitler did. No doubt the nutcases under Hitler had told the chief madman about such studies, though.