Word: hansson
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Sweden's bald, bushy-browed, Social Democratic Prime Minister Per Albin Hansson should have been bowling or playing bridge with Octogenarian King Gustav in the Royal Palace as was his wont. The recent elections had produced no surprises. The Government Coalition had lost moderately to the left, but had still received 94% of all the votes cast...
...North. Three years ago at a dinner in Lund, Sweden's Prime Minister Per Albin Hansson made this statement: "No earthly power can prevent Sweden's fighting on the side of a Denmark in distress." Long before Denmark came to distress last week it was plain that Sweden would not fight side by side with anybody against Germany, unless Germany forced her to do so. Sweden's cultural and economic ties with Germany are too strong for political differences to break, and she is bound even closer to Germany by her mortal dread of Russia...
Against this threat Premier Hansson talked surprisingly tough. He ordered all Swedish ships to run for neutral or Allied ports, announced that Sweden would defend her independence, whatever the cost, and added: "It is not compatible with Swedish neutrality to let any belligerent power use Swedish territory for its operations. No such demands have been made on us. If they are, they must be rejected...
Although this sounded like defiance of Germany, Premier Hansson was playing a cagey game with a bad hand. His hand was strengthened before the week was out by the British capture of Narvik. If Britain establishes a strong force there, Germany will have to think twice before invading Sweden. It is only 84 miles from Narvik to the Swedish iron mines at Kiruna, 125 miles to the mines at Gällivare, and Britons could probably reach the mines before the Germans. But Premier Hansson had still other problems. For what he mortally fears is that Sweden may become...
Meanwhile Per Albin Hansson's letters kept pouring in. They put to confusion those who believed Swedish opinion was overwhelmingly for intervention. Most of them praised the Premier's neutrality. But those which did not were in such unpretty language that police immediately stationed two detectives and police dogs at his Appelviken ("The Apple Blossom") villa and, wherever he went at the wheel of his little Chrysler, shadowed him in a big, radio-equipped police...