Swedish Social Democrats love to boast about how Sweden constitutes proof that welfare state policies can create the world's “best welfare” while at the same time the economy is doing well. Even left-wing politicians abroad praise Sweden as the promised land of the "golden mean". And it is certainly true that during the 1950s and 1960s Sweden had one of the world's strongest economies at the same time that the welfare state policies were being expanded. The 1950s and 1960s have gone down in history as a golden age when the welfare state was expanding while the Swedish economy was growing more rapidly than ever. So, what was the reason for the Swedish welfare state's renowned "record years" during the first twenty-five years after the end of World War II?
 
I have an hypothesis. It is that the reason for the success of Swedish welfare policy was Sweden's collaboration with Nazi Germany during the Second World War.
 
During the war, Sweden co-operated and kindly supplied the iron ore, the ball bearings and numerous other goods that Nazi Germany's war machine depended on. Almost exactly 52% of the iron ore that Nazi Germany's war economy consumed during World War II was delivered from Sweden. Without the Swedish iron ore, Nazi Germany would not have had the slightest chance of manufacturing all those cannons and tanks that were used for its war of aggression.
 
Per-Albin Hansson and his cronies were really keen for the Nazis to get their iron ore! They made sure that the Swedish miners were the only occupational group exempted from compulsory military service - so that they could mine the iron ore that constituted the bribe that made Nazi Germany leave Sweden in peace. In addition, the dock workers in Luleå had to work more overtime than ever before during World War II - so that they would have time to load all the iron ore that was shipped to Nazi Germany. It is also a fairly well-known fact that the Norwegian resistance movement gave very high priority to attempts to knock out the Swedish SKF ball bearing factory in Oslo. That's how important the Swedish company's ball bearings were to Nazi Germany - the Norwegian resistance fighters knew that.
 
So Nazi Germany didn't have to invade Sweden. Sweden kindly volunteered to help the Nazis anyway. And, as a thank you, the Nazis refrained from dragging helpful little Sweden into the war.
 
This meant that when the war ended, the factories of the large Swedish industrial companies were in good condition, while the competitors of Swedish capital goods manufacturers in the rest of Europe only had bombed-out factories at their disposal. In addition, the ancillary services to the industries in Sweden were intact. The railways and the ports that transported and loaded the products of Swedish industry were in good condition. The banking system which financed foreign trade and mediated payments to and from Swedish industry was quite healthy, etc.
 
Swedish industry therefore had an enormous competitive advantage compared to the industries in the rest of Europe. This meant that after the end of the war, Swedish industry was so strong and profitable that it was able to support the burgeoning welfare state better than the industries in the rest of Europe for about twenty-five years – the so-called "record years" as they were called. So, welfare policy was expanded at least as much in Sweden as in the rest of Europe, while the economy nevertheless still grew much faster than in Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, etc. It took about twenty-five years after the end of the war until the expanding Swedish welfare state began to break the back of the private sector.
 
But then, in the 1970s, things started to go downhill fast!
 
Over the past fifty years, Sweden has been slipping behind year after year. Mass unemployment has spread. The housing shortage has only worsened. Health care queues have become longer and longer. Real wages have stagnated. More, and still more, Swedish households have ended up in debt and benefit traps. Those cherished Swedish record years are now just a distant memory. Like all that "excellent" welfare. Now we Swedes can no longer live off the legacy of the shameful years of collaboration during World War II.
 
But – due to the euphoria experienced during “the record years” after the war the Swedish people have come to take for granted the delusion that the “Swedish Model” is beyond criticism. This idea has been internalized to such an extreme degree that many Swedes cannot even conceive of the possibility that there might be something seriously wrong with that model. It is so goshdarned hard to disturb the Swedish citizens´ idolization of the welfare state.
 
So, now we must pay the price for the bourgeois political psrties´ default on the virtue of honesty concerning the role Sweden´s blackleg policy during the war played in bringing about the modern Swedish welfare state!
 
The welfare state slowly destroys the people´s welfare – but most Swedes just continue to support the rotten welfare state anyway - like somnambulists.
 
Sweden´s Social Democrats have gotten themselves substantial public opinion profits from the economic consequences of the Sweden´s blackleg policy during the Second World War. Sometimes crime pays! The Swedish Social Democrats should have been punished instead of rewarded for what they did during the Second World War. For – the Nazis themselves were punished after the war ended. Should not those who collaborated with the Nazis have been punished also?
 
But – if the Social Democrats had done the morally right thing – and thus had halted the iron ore deliveries to Nazi Germany; then the Nazis would, but of course, have invaded Sweden - right? But of course. But the Social Democrats should have stopped the iron ore deliveries anyway! If you are going to claim to be "anti-Nazi", you must go from words to actions! The claim to be an enemy of Nazism must not be just empty verbiage!
 
Sweden would in fact have had a real chance of surviving – despite the insane disarmament policy perpetrated on Sweden by the Social Democrats during the first six years of the 1930s. Sweden enjoyed an enormous geographical advantage over Nazi Germany.
 
The Baltic Sea!
 
The Baltic Sea lay like a gigantic moat between Nazi Germany and Sweden. If Hitler had decided that Nazi Germany should invade Sweden, to get at the iron ore - the Nazis would have had to ship an entire army across the sea and set it ashore on the Swedish mainland. That undertaking would not have been easy at all. It would have been enormously difficult. If "only" the Swedish military had done a good enough job of stopping the Nazis at the coast, Sweden would probably have survived. In that case, World War II would have ended almost before it had begun. Millions of innocent human lives could have been saved - if only the Social Democrats had done the only morally decent thing instead of committing moral treason.
 
Furthermore - even if the Nazis had succeeded in invading Sweden, the Swedes would have been able to resort to the "scorched earth" tactic. The iron ore mines could have been evacuated as soon as Sweden halted its deliveries to Nazi Germany. And the Swedish military would have been able to install a great deal of explosives in the mines at the same time. Then, if and when the Nazi army had succeeded in entering Sweden, the Swedes would have been able to detonate the explosive charges and thereby blow up the iron ore mines. Even with a successful invasion of Sweden, it would certainly have taken the Nazis several years to get the production of iron ore up and running again. In the meantime, the Nazi Wehrmacht would have come to a standstill!
 
Who was then responsible for the Swedish blackleg policy?
 
Well - on the one hand, the arch-Social Democrat Per-Albin Hansson was Prime Minister during the war. But - on the other hand, Sweden had a coalition government beginning in. This, despite the fact that the Social Democrats actually had a majority of their own in both chambers of the Riksdag during the years 1940 to 1944. Considering the latter fact in particular, one must reasonably come to the conclusion that the main responsibility for Sweden's betrayal of the cause of freedom during the Second World War lay with the Social Democratic Workers' Party.
 
Also, consider the fact that the Swedish labor movement bore some share of the moral responsibility for the Holocaust!
 
The Holocaust took several years to carry out. It took place mainly during the years 1943-1945. How was it possible that the Nazis were able to cling to power for those two and a half years? The Wehrmacht had a hard time delaying the Red Army's advance from the east towards the German heartland. It is obvious that the Nazi German resistance would have collapsed without the weapons whose production was made possible by Swedish iron ore. Sweden's iron ore supplies were an important prerequisite for the Holocaust. Without Sweden's continued iron ore supplies, the Nazis would not have been able to stay in power long enough to have had time to murder so many millions Jews and others! If only Sweden had halted the iron ore supplies to Nazi Germany in 1942, the Nazi regime would have collapsed fairly quickly and the bulk of the Holocaust would have been averted!
 
And since it was the Swedish Social Democrats who had the ultimate political power in Sweden up until 1944, it was precisely the Swedish Social Democrats who shared in the responsibility for the Holocaust together with the German Nazis.
 
In particular, the blame for Sweden's blackleg policy lay very much on Per-Albin Hansson personally. He was the party leader of the Social Democrats when it happened. And - it was Per-Albin who was responsible for Sweden's senseless disarmament policy during the first six years of the 1930s. It is well known that Per-Albin wanted to free up resources in the state budget for the expansion of welfare policy. So, he disarmed Sweden's military defence forces - at the very same time that everyone who wanted to know what was going on in Germany knew full well that Hitler was arming up his nation - arming it up for war! But, Per-Albin's priorities were such that he put Sweden´s and also, Europe´s, freedom at risk for the sake of social benefits. That is why Sweden found itself at a severe military disadvantage when World War II broke out in 1939.
 
High treason was a crime punishable by death in Sweden during World War II. And the crime of leading Sweden's collaboration with one of the worst mass murdering regimes in world history during an ongoing war of aggression, I put it to you, falls under the heading of "high treason"! So, I say that Per-Albin should have been put on trial at the end of the war. And condemned to death. Per-Albin was not a Social Democrat hero at all. He was a treasonous villain who deserved to hang by the neck until dead! Sweden´s Social Democrats should be ashamed of themselves to have had him as their leader for so many years. Consider that Mussolini and fascist Italy were merely a bad joke as allies of the Nazis. Fascist Italy could not even defeat the lilleputt nation of Greece without Nazi Germany bailing them out. Sweden, on the other hand, with its iron ore, played a much more important role than Italy for Nazi Germany´s war effort. So, Per-Albin Hansson helped Hitler much more than Mussolini ever did!
 
An execution of Hansson could in fact have had beneficial consequences! The villain´s execution could have had as an effect that the people of Sweden woke up and realized that it is not a good idea at all to put one´s freedom at risk for the sake of social welfare benefits!
 
So, collaboration with Nazis? Never again! Let´s get rid of the treasonous Swedish Social Democrat Party!