The Swedish Navy in WW2

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Already the heavyweight of the Scandinavian fleets during the first world war, and despite interwar financianl crisis, budget reduction and general opinion pacifism, Sweden kept a sizeable Navy operational in 1939 that was a credible and serious enouh to enter in German calculation when invading Norway, both in scale and quality. The kriegsmarine was not in tonnage that far away from it. Swedish Neutrality, athough seriously tested and its armies and territory courted by both sides, never took sides until the end of the war.

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29 thoughts on “The Swedish Navy in WW2”

  3. It is also important to remeber tha Britain and France had plans to invade Norway, and then get access to Kiruna and the Iron ore in Sweden. The excuse was to assist Finland during The Winter war. That war ended before the plan could be executed….

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  5. "Sweden has an impressive naval tradition, particularly by Scandinavian standards. From the 1700s to the early 1800s, the powerful Swedish Navy… had only one other naval power in the Baltic that was its rival: the Russian Navy."

    This is patently false. The Swedish Navy spent most of the 1600s and early 1700s getting defeated by the Danish Navy, and the primary rival of the Swedish Navy up until 1807 was always the Danish Navy. The Danish Navy was also consistently stronger than the Swedish Navy from c. 1715 and onwards. The Swedish Navy only really rivalled the Danish Navy during a brief period in the 1780s, where French subsidies had allowed Gustav III to expand his sea-going force. The Swedish Navy generally had problems ranging from poor crews and officers (Scanian War), incompetent admirals chosen due to royal titles rather than merit (Russo-Swedish War of 1788-1790), or just poor up-keep due to a lack of resources and money (last years of the Great Northern War).

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  7. The swedish coastal defence was formidable during ww2, the navy was just the first line of defence but on land we had countless fortifications with artillery the equivalent of a huge number of destroyers, cruisers and battleships. Remember that the swedish military was only focused on defence of the country. Amongst other we built the 500km long "Skåne line" around the most southern parts of the coast.

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  10. Fun fact: At the outbreak of World War One, in early August 1914, the Russians assumed that Sweden would fight alongside Germany. The Russian Baltic Fleet went looking for the Swedish Fleet off Gotland. But happily it was elsewhere.

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  12. you do know that Sweden basically is the reason why the germans could produce so many tanks as 1/3 of all germanys steel came from sweden and we were just friends with them which was enough for them not to invade us

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  17. Sweden was not very "neutral". Thousands of Germans with equipment, traveled through large parts of Sweden before they attacked "from behind" in Narvik Norway in 1940. The Swedes supplied Nazi Germany with considerable amounts of metals for the war effort. The old king was a big Nazi sympathizer. Yes, they helped the Norwegians and the Allies with information, and became more and more "friendly" to the Allies as the war went worse for Germany . No, the Swedes are spineless, and today there is "civil war" in several cities due to loos of control and failed immigration

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  25. I think that the Swedish government did more or less the right thing in order to maintain neutrality and avoid an invasion (although there were very questionable decisions made). I do not think however that their navy, coastal defense and armed forces in general were strong enough in order to avoid a German invasion. The number of coastal defenses might sound impressive but the Swedish coast was long and the effectiveness of coastal defense is questionable. Their navy was too small and outdated to really stop anything. And the Germans just could have bombed big cities, like in The Netherlands.
    The size of the country would have been excellent for serious resistance.
    The real reason for not invading was that neutral Sweden was very much in the German interest, they still pretty much got from the Swedes what they wanted.

    Still. All of it saved Sweden from the horrors of war.

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  26. Sweden provided both the Britts and the Germs with ballbearings throughout the war. British Airways had an allmost dayly connection with Sweden, witch brougth back both ballbearings and downed pilots. And the Danish atomic scientist Niels Bohr was flown to Britain in the bombbay of a civil Moskito, painted in British Airways livery. He then went on to become a part of the Manhatan Project. It flew unarmed, and with civil pilots, depending on speed to avoid the Luftwaffe.

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