The Nazi propaganda offensive against Sweden opened long before the war started — and so too did Sweden's defence. Recognising the importance of influencing overseas opinion and neutrals, especially Sweden, Nazi Germany soon began to influence the German news agenda abroad through ‘placing political and cultural articles according to the wishes of the (propaganda) minister.’ Germany's change of regime did not go un-remarked in Sweden. Right-wing liberal editor, Professor Torgny Segerstedt, famously reacted to Hitler's 1933 Machtübernahme with the editorial comment in his newspaper Göteborgs Handeis-och Sjöfartstidning (GHT): ‘Herr Hitler is an insult.’ This too did not pass unnoticed because a few days later, a protest telegram arrived from Göring. It was to be the first of many German objections. This chapter looks at two aspects of information in wartime Sweden: firstly, the effort by the Government to control and manipulate what was written and broadcast and secondly, the attempts to influence the Swedish public.

Media Oversight and Restraint

The 1933 GHT incident set a pattern which was to last over the next ten years: Berlin carefully scrutinised Sweden's press and radio broadcasts and protested about any item which it disliked. Not that this was a new experience for Sweden. During the First World War, Foreign Ministry officials had to endure almost daily complaints about Swedish press comment from all the belligerents' diplomats. It was, however, Germany that had maintained the most active ‘press policy’ which persisted even after the downfall of the Second Reich in 1918. One strand of German foreign policy in the 1920s was to resist the Versailles settlement while various German ‘cultural’ bodies like Nordische Gesellschaft (NG) promoted the anti-Versailles view abroad.