TELEGRAM (Secret Code V)
Stockholm, 4/4.1940.
Received, .5.4.1940 No. 383 of the 4.4.1940
taken down by telephone MOST URGENT
TO BE KEPT SECRET. Foreign Minister Gunther today asked me to call on him in order to discuss the political situation. He started by saying that lately much had been written and said about threatened action against Scandinavia by the Western powers. On the other hand, the Swedish government had information that in Northern Germany, particularly in Stettin and other Baltic ports, large numbers of troops were concentrated. He attached value to the German government receiving complete clarity about the real situation which the Swedish government considers to exist, and had caused the Swedish ambassador in Berlin to make an explanation to this effect to Secretary of State Weizsacker. The Swedish government had no reason at all to believe in an impending action by the Western powers against Scandinavia. On the contrary, on the strength of all official reports and other information, it considered the situation lately to be much calmer. In par-
966
D-844
ticular, Gunther did not at all believe in the possibility of the carrying out of a British coup against the Swedish ore area via Narvik. Sweden had at this moment a very strong armed force in the north which could frustrate any such attempt, and Sweden was determined, now as ever, to repel by force of arms any violation of her territory. Without being a prophet, Gunther did not believe in a British act of violence against Norway either, though of course he could not speak of this with as much certainty as with regard to Sweden; at any rate, however, the Norwegian government, with which he was in close contact, was of the same opinion. Ore transports from Narvik were too small in relation to Sweden's total deliveries of ore to Germany, which would soon be possible again in the Baltic also, to counterbalance the great risk for Britain. In this respect Gunther thought the threatening elaborations in the allied press were more likely an attempt to provoke Germany.
Where Russia was concerned, also, the Swedish government had no fears. Gunther mentioned in this connection that the project of a Nordic defense pact was not a subject for speedy development and any threatening attitude towards Russia was out of the question. Moreover the Finnish government's matter regarding the project which it had put forward during the closing stage of the peace negotiations was not even known in detail to the Swedish government. '
In conclusion, Gunther requested me to report his statements to my government, and repeated that the Swedish government attached the greatest value to the German government not erroneously getting the impression of the existence of circumstances which might evoke the possibility—he would not use the word necessity at all—of special measures by Germany with regard to Scandinavia.
Gunther's carefulness in expressing himself gave me the impression that he was filled with a certain anxiety about a possibly impending German move in a northerly direction. Possibly, today's announcement of the "Aftonbladet" on the report by the journalist Steer to the "Daily Telegraph" played a part in this (I refer you to today's D.N.B. [German News Bureau] report Stockholm). A remark by the cabinet secretary Boheman points to this, who jokingly asked me before I entered the minister's room whether I had read the terrible news in "Aftonbladet" too.
967
Report to the Foreign Office on the Swedish government's belief that neither the western nations nor Russia were planning military actions in the Swedish region, so that Germany had no reason to intervene
Authors
Below (German military attache in Sweden (1940))
Below
- Additional details not yet available.
Date: 04 April 1940
Defendant: Erich Raeder
Total Pages: 1
Language of Text: English
Source of Text: Nazi conspiracy and aggression (Office of United States Chief of Counsel for Prosecution of Axis Criminality. Washington, D.C. : U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946.)
Evidence Code: D-844
Citations: IMT (page 9979), IMT (page 10036)
HLSL Item No.: 453043
Notes:In the transcript the document number is mis-stated as D 44.