Switzerland was not attacked by Hitler, why?

Originally posted by Ovidius Well thats ridiculous, Sweden's neutrality was advantagous to the Allies. It was also one less country to invade and sort out.

Sweden as an Ally would have been even more advantageous, and its not like Sweden had a choice, if Nazi Germany would have had the resources, they would not have traded for the Iron ore but simply invaded the country and taken what they wanted, many more European countries were invaded with no choice left whatsoever...

Better to have a neutral Sweden than ANOTHER Nazi Protectorate. And lets face it, as a protectorate, its Jews would have been erradicated.

no, as i said it, many Axis Countries refused to hand over their Jews and there was nothing Hitler could have done against it...i already presented examples above: Bulgaria, Finland, Italy until '43...

"put up a good resistence", Sweden? Come on.

it had more Industry than Finland (and more population?) yet almost the same natural defensive advantages, thats no argument.

So they should have had the BALLS and acted like an arrogant nation and see their status taken from them within a few days - with absolutely no gain for anyone. What a great move that would have been. Better neutral than allied heh.

Ever heard of Titos Partizans? or the Polish volutneers that continued to fight on all fronts? do you think wars are won by Neutralicy? even Turkey joined the allies in late '45...

Originally posted by Temujin hehe, you both just prooved my points and probably didn't even noticed it. :D of course you can convince yourself with phrases like "but we also supported allies" or "we had to co-operate or face invasion" and stuff like that but the historical facts remain, dodgy foreign diplomacy and promises like "we would jon the war" haha, good ones. ;) many mayn countries had balls and DID face invasion and did not let themselv push around by Nazi Germany and put up a good ressistance and aided the allies much more than Sweden has done, liek Poland, Greec etc. and letting escaped Jews into the country...like wow, some AXIS members like Bulgaria and italy (before 43) didn't even handed their Jews over to Germany in the first place even though they had their soldiers in their country. while at the same time Sweden practised sterilisation of handicapped people.... remember, toleration equals cooperation, doing nothing is like helping them.

Originally posted by Ovidius "put up a good resistence", Sweden?

In 1940, not a chance, you're right. By 1943 sure. But Sweden only got there by a belated program for re-armament, using the German coal the iron-ore bought. And after 1943 Sweden also stopped playing nice with Germany.

The post-war Swedish mistake has been to try to gloss over what was in fact a highly unpalatable situation forced upon it and a response adopted out of necessity, by making neutrality out as some kind of automatic moral high-ground. It isn't, it never was, and certainly not in WWII.

But that doesn't mean pointlessly provoking Germany into attacking and invading when doing so would have been futile was a better choice.

The situation was so bad that when mobilized in 1940 several regiments issued a single rifle per platoon for target practice. The rest made do with wooden mock-ups for drill.
One of heavy cruisers of the navy (it had two iirc), the pride of the Swedish navy, set out of port to testfire its heavy guns for the first time in a decade, and upon doing so, the recoil fried all the electronics, and the cruiser had to request emergency assistence to be towed back to port for urgent repairs, where it remained for quite some time. The rest of the navy wasn't in much fitter state. (The subs might have been able of a decent performance.)
The Swedish arifarce had all of 150 obsolete early 30's double-decker fighter aircraft to take on the Luftwaffe with, and virtually no tanks.
Most of Sweden isn't tank country anyway, but the southernmost counties that are would automatically have had to be given up as undefensible. That's about a quarter of the Swedish population, quite a lot of industry, and the country's bread-basket. Without it Sweden would starve within a year.

That's about the level of readyness of the Swedish armed forces in 1940. One can critizise Sweden for having neglected its military until it was too late, but anyone who thinks Sweden would have had any chance of stopping, or even much slowing, a German invasion in 1940 is plain ignorant of the situation.

Assuming Sweden out of a feeling of moral obligation declares war on Germany over the invasion of Norway and Denmark, it's a short hop across the strait from Denmark, and the Germans now have the entire length of the Swedish-Norwegian border to choose from.

The likeliest scenario is that Germany rolls its tanks into the south, with no real threat from either the air or from Swedish tanks on the ground, and in the north they drive a wedge across Sweden and take over the minefields producing the ore.
Even if Sweden manages to fight off a German invasion into central Sweden, or the Germans don't even try to push into it, the iron-ore is now secure for Germany, and Sweden is severely reduced and will starve within a year. As there is no coal coming through Swedish industry will quickly grind to a complete standstill. Heating will also become an issue, and people will start freezing to death in winter.
This could be accomplished by the Germans in a couple of weeks. And as the Swedes knew, watching Poland, even if the Allies were willing to help, they would be entirely unable to do so.

At best the Swedes could take heart from having made a morally impeccable choice (in retrospect at least), but it would also have been a totally pointless gesture, just another "casualty" in Churchill's words. We'd be sitting now debating how the Swedes could have been such utter morons in WWII.

Originally posted by Temujin jump in front of a train? there are countries in ww2 who did this and they suceeded. without countries jumping in front of traines there would be no democracy in this world...

Originally posted by Temujin like Polish and Free French

Originally posted by Temujin this topic was originally about neutralicy and ultimately about morale. cooperating with Nazi Germany doesn't qualify as being close to the Allies nor being Neutral, all i heard so far are pathetic excuses and apologists. Finland had even less industrial capacities and manpower and stood against the Red Army which stopped "The Train"...

Churchill disagrees with you. I guess he had a more realistic view upon the world. As Poland, Finland didn't exactly have the choice (and Sweden did transfer a third of its airforce to fight for the Finns despite the threat from the Germans). It's pretty clear where the Swedish allegiance actually were, no matter how "dishonourable" the iron ore trade was.

Originally posted by Styrbiorn Churchill disagrees with you. I guess he had a more realistic view upon the world. As Poland, Finland didn't exactly have the choice (and Sweden did transfer a third of its airforce to fight for the Finns despite the threat from the Germans). It's pretty clear where the Swedish allegiance actually were, no matter how "dishonourable" the iron ore trade was.

wow, a third of its airforce! how about allying with Finland and help them with the entire armed forces?? as i can see Finns are good enough to fight for Swedes in their wars but not vice versa...so much for the United Scandinavia you dream of... you fail to see that showing allegiance means actually taking sides, which Sweden never did as they never joined the war effort of neither Axis nor Allies yet helped both sides war efforts actively with granting troops passing over their territory, trading strategical ressources and as you pointed out, giving a third of their air force to Finland, which i would considder as another help for the Axis, seeing as how overall the SU was the main enemy for the Axis. even Brazil contributed a Division to the war effort in Italy.

Originally posted by Temujin wow, a third of its airforce! how about allying with Finland and help them with the entire armed forces?? as i can see Finns are good enough to fight for Swedes in their wars but not vice versa...so much for the United Scandinavia you dream of... you fail to see that showing allegiance means actually taking sides, which Sweden never did as they never joined the war effort of neither Axis nor Allies yet helped both sides war efforts actively with granting troops passing over their territory, trading strategical ressources and as you pointed out, giving a third of their air force to Finland, which i would considder as another help for the Axis, seeing as how overall the SU was the main enemy for the Axis. even Brazil contributed a Division to the war effort in Italy.

Originally posted by Temujin wow, a third of its airforce! how about allying with Finland and help them with the entire armed forces?? as i can see Finns are good enough to fight for Swedes in their wars but not vice versa...so much for the United Scandinavia you dream of... you fail to see that showing allegiance means actually taking sides, which Sweden never did as they never joined the war effort of neither Axis nor Allies yet helped both sides war efforts actively with granting troops passing over their territory, trading strategical ressources and as you pointed out, giving a third of their air force to Finland, which i would considder as another help for the Axis, seeing as how overall the SU was the main enemy for the Axis. even Brazil contributed a Division to the war effort in Italy.

Yeah, declare war on the USSR when the Germans are threatening from the other direction. You can't compare Sweden with Brazil or whatnot, they didn't face the risk of getting annexed by their neighbours the two most brutal dictatorships of its day. 

You fail to realize declaring war had been utterly pointless, with thousands of dead just to make a symbolic point. The real world doesn't work like that. Sweden provided the Allies with ball bearings, intercepted German communications, training and equiping of Norwegian sabotage units, stationing American special forces etc etc. That you'd consider the help to Finland as help to the Axis only shows you had even less knowledge about the war then I thought: the USSR wasn't even an allied nation when they invaded Finland - in fact when the Germans and Russians divided up Eastern Europe Finland was supposed to become Russian. Even the British and French planned to intervene on the Finnish side! Sweden never declared itself neutral in this conflict either, and supplied the Finns with artillery, ammunition, supplies, volunteers etc, although the Finns were justifiably disappointed no regular forces except the air force were sent to their aid - that, I think, is a shame.

Originally posted by Temujin of course it was an help for the axis, everyone fighting against the SU is help for the Axis...

Edited by Styrbiorn - 15-May-2007 at 04:32