Sweden was free of alliances during the Second World War, and therefore never took any direct, active military part in the armed conflict and was never invaded by German armed forces, unlike its neighboring countries Denmark and Norway. The Second World War has thus not affected the politics of Sweden in the same way as in the countries that were directly involved in the war, but it has nevertheless created a complex set of social memories associated with the Second World War in Sweden. A question that will be discussed in this chapter is how museums and other agents of memory have related to the role of Sweden in the Second World War with a specific focus on the White Buses.

Red Cross buses from Sweden and Denmark helped to save more than 15,000 people from concentration camps and the collapsing Third Reich between March and May in 1945. These rescue expeditions have in colloquial terms earned the nickname “the White Buses,” since the buses that took part in the action were painted white with a red cross. In the following chapter, a particular focus will be placed on how the history of the White Buses has been narrated in two Swedish museum exhibitions, and how the events have been commemorated in two monuments located in Malmö. I will draw an outline of Swedish history during the Second World War and Cold War era in the first half of this chapter. I consider this background history to be of the utmost importance for the understanding of social memories related to the Second World War in Sweden.

Sweden in a European political context – the Second World War

The Scandinavian countries had successfully maintained a neutral policy during the First World War, which can help to explain the political strategy of Sweden 1939−45. The Swedish military forces were in a poor state in 1939, but with the full mobilization the armed capability of Sweden gradually grew stronger during the war. The full neutrality of Sweden during the Second World War is something of a matter for debate, however. Sweden exported large quantities of iron ore to Germany throughout the war until late 1944, thus supplying an estimated 50 percent of the iron needed for the German war industry.