Rania Ali-Svedsäter ’26’s article and rebuttal to Thiago Jollon ’27 provides an insight into foreign policy and the potential limitations of neutrality, I find several issues with the way that political neutrality is defined and Ali-Svedsäter seems to neglect the fact that the Swedish government directly colluded with Nazi Germany and as Jollon said, isn’t very neutral.
My primary issue with Ali-Svedsäter’s paper is that it defines neutrality as “a nation’s indifference to world affairs around them.” However, this could not be further than the truth. Neutrality is in reality not a utopian ideal of not caring about the world’s affairs, but rather attempting to stay out of them and directly profit off a situation. To this definition, Sweden has been “neutral” as it has not been directly involved in any conflict since the Napoleonic Wars, as Ali-Svedäter has said. My definition of neutrality and Ali-Svedsäter’s however do both agree that Sweden’s state policy has been based more on pragmatic rather than ideological goals. Through their attempts to remain outside of the larger war, the Swedish government, as Jollon has already iterated, were intermeshed with their foreign policy, making Sweden collaborative in Nazi Germany’s actions, breaking Ali-Svedsäter’s concept of neutrality while maintaining the generally agreed definition as they were not militarily involved in the conflict.
Secondly, I find the overlooking of Sweden’s role in the Holocaust profusely upsetting. Although the Swedish government did come up with or engage in the policy of ethnically cleansing the Jewish people, and did rescue nearly the entirety of Denmark’s Jewish population, they were fully aware of the Holocaust in Europe. It is important to note however, that the rescue of Danish Jews only happened in 1943, when Sweden could tell that the war was going to end in the Allies’ favor. However, this does not obfuscate the fact that Sweden forced over 21,000 of its own population to undergo forced sterilizations, an act which took inspiration from Nazi Germany’s own actions. Although Sweden obviously was not a national socialist state and were just immoral actions, as Ali-Svedsäter says in her letter to the editor, they should not be overlooked in the greater picture.
Thirdly, I disagree with Ali-Svedsäter’s view that there was no conspiracy in Swedish collaboration with Nazi Germany. I generally agree that Sweden mostly collaborated for the sake of not being invaded but they could have likely made the job harder on Nazi Germany by resisting pressure to launder Jewish money confiscated during the Holocaust and could have likely refused the large-scale transport of Swedish minerals and German troops through their territory.
Signed by Felix Bret ’27
