Word: hansson
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...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...
Last week Per Albin Hansson received tons of letters and telegrams. Some of them praised him to the skies. Some threatened unpleasant death. They were all about two declarations he recently made: the first said that Sweden would give Finland nothing more than unofficial aid; the second explained why-"Unanimity for intervention cannot be found in the Swedish people...
...other obvious reason for Swedish nonintervention: Stockholm is within very easy bombing distance of Berlin as well as Leningrad. Last week a curious deal was reported arranged between Sweden and Germany. Premier Hansson's Government agreed to buy all the arms of Swedish make and pattern which Germany captured in Poland. Germans had no use for guns of a different type from their own. What made the deal curious was that the only imminent use Sweden could make of them would be against Germany's ally Russia...
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...