Sweden, Japan, and the Long Second World War

1931-1945

Pascal Lottaz, Ingemar Ottosson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781032021416
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000402292
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

We thank Ekman & Co AB and Gadelius Holding Ltd for their kind and generous support, making this research available onlinefor free.

Lottaz and Ottosson explore the intricate relationship between neutral Sweden and Imperial Japan during the latter's 15 years of warfare in Asia and in the Pacific. While Sweden's relationship with European Axis powers took place under the premise of existential security concerns, the case of Japan was altogether different. Japan never was a threat to Sweden, militarily or economically. Nevertheless, Stockholm maintained a close relationship with Tokyo until Japan's surrender in 1945. This book explores the reasons for that and therefore provides a study on the rationale and the value of neutrality in the Long Second World War.

Sweden, Japan, and the Long Second World War is a valuable resource for scholars of the Second World War and of the history of neutrality.

1 Introduction

On the night of April 13, 1945, a lonely plane crossed the Japanese Sea. Coming from Tokyo, at the height of Japan’s doomed war in the Pacific, the aircraft was not carrying bombs or soldiers, but a foreign diplomat—the Swedish envoy to Japan, Widar Bagge.¹ It was a solemn flight in several ways for Stockholm’s most senior representative in East Asia. For one, it was an emotional farewell after more than a decade of service in Tokyo, where he witnessed some of Japan’s brightest moments as well as its darkest days.² He knew the “good” Japan of the 1920s, the cooperative contributor to the League of Nations, the supportive pillar of internationalism, and the friendly nation that welcomed foreigners to trade and collaborate. But he also experienced first-hand the Japan of violence, xenophobia, and murder, when fanatics militarized society, assassinated politicians, and invaded numerous territories in the name of the Empire’s “natural” right to lead the peoples of Asia.³ Finally, when the bombs started falling, he had to watch the slow but steady destruction of a country he loved.

Bagge’s departure was also literally a solitary flight as no other diplomat or foreign civilian could have even dreamed of leaving Japan on a plane this late into the war. He was air-lifted to Manchuli (Manzhouli), a northern Manchurian town under Japanese control that bordered the Soviet Union. From there, he could take the trans-Siberian that connected him via Moscow to Stockholm. The flight was a special privilege that he only received because of excellent contacts to the Empire’s most senior politicians and an extraordinary plan: to bring about a negotiated peace between Japan and the United States. The so-called “Bagge maneuver” or “Bagge peace feeler”—subject of Chapter 6—was ultimately unsuccessful but the episode incarnates a central message of this book. Sweden, a country that was neither an ally nor an enemy of the Empire, had a part to play in the events that would shape Asia and the Pacific for generations to come. During World War II, Sweden was a neutral country, but that did not incapacitate its diplomacy. On the contrary, because of its neutral position, Sweden remained constantly involved in global diplomacy. Not only could Bagge fly out of Japan at a precarious moment but he was proactively approached by peace-inclined Japanese to help them in the grimmest of times in a way that merely a handful of countries were still able to do. Only Switzerland and Spain were in a comparable position.⁴ This book tells the Swedish story.⁵

A Scandinavian neutral and a belligerent faraway

Sweden’s experience of World War II was significantly different from that of many other nations. While large parts of the world were consumed by the inferno of total war, Sweden did not share that violent fate because it never joined the fighting. It proclaimed its neutrality toward the various theaters of war, vowing not to take sides, in accordance with the provisions of international law. There exists a widespread misunderstanding that neutrality during wartime requires a neutral state to disengage from contact with belligerent nations, and that economic or political interactions are a breach of “strict” neutrality. That is simply wrong. The opposite is the case, as the Law of Neutrality (a part of international law) explicitly guarantees the right of neutral countries to trade and interact with belligerent states. That is precisely what Sweden did during World War II. It continued normal diplomatic and economic relations with Allied and Axis Powers alike—including Japan.

There is, nevertheless, something odd about Swedish wartime diplomacy toward Japan. Despite strong ideological differences and heavy Swedish criticism on Japan’s bellicose behavior (first in China and then in Southeast Asia and the Pacific), diplomatic interactions between the two nations did not weaken but intensified over time. For example, the Swedish legation in Tokyo grew from 3 people in the late 1930s to over 20 in 1945. Telegrams from Bagge to the Foreign Ministry, the Utrikesdepartementet (UD), increased from one or two per week to several messages daily, and while Stockholm used to host only a few Japanese diplomats—five in 1931 and merely one in 1941—by the time Tokyo surrendered to the Allies 55 people were working for the Japanese mission. The longer the war lasted, the more Japan began to invest in its diplomatic ties with the only remaining Nordic neutral. What makes this situation more noteworthy is that, at the same time, trade between the two countries collapsed. During the strongest year of bilateral trade, in 1937, Sweden imported goods for over 12 million crowns from Japan but in 1945, less than 0.3 million crowns worth of goods still reached its shores.

How can we explain this bond between the bellicose, militaristic Japan and neutral, democratic Sweden, especially when trade—one of Sweden’s main interests in Japan—diminished so drastically? Did a solid friendship connect the two countries or did the necessities of the days dictate the movement of their relationship? Was there something more? Maybe something sinister, an inglorious part of Sweden’s national history? In the wake of revelations in the 1990s about the collaboration of World War II neutrals with Nazi Germany, Sweden had already had to accept much criticism for its interactions with Axis Powers.⁶ In 1991 Swedish journalist, Maria-Pia Boëthius, published a controversial book titled Heder och samvete [With honor and conscience]. It was an emotional indictment of Swedish foreign policy during the war years, which started a long period of soul-searching.⁷ The debate focused on the question whether Sweden’s engagement with Nazi Germany was done to protect the country from an invasion or if Sweden, like other neutrals, willingly became an accomplice of Hitler, purely for business interests. Should we expect to find a similar dynamic in Sweden’s interactions with the easternmost Axis Power?

The short answer is no. Our book, in fact, argues that the case of Swedish–Japanese relations sheds a new light on neutral wartime diplomacy because classic World War II frames of reference do not apply. The question, for instance, whether Sweden collaborated with Japan for reasons of military security or business interests makes little to no sense. There is no reason to analyze Swedish interactions with Japan under the same existential premise as its relations with European powers. From a militarily point of view, Sweden had nothing to fear from Japan. The two countries were separated by a continent and despite Sweden having had “unequal treaties” with Japan and China until late in its semicolonial history, it had no territorial interests overseas in the way the British, the Dutch, or the United States had.⁸ Under no rational scenario could Japan have ever posed a security threat to Stockholm. In Europe, on the other hand, Sweden was caught in a most delicate situation. Germany, Great Britain, and the USSR were all threats to Swedish security. Belligerents routinely ignored the rights of neutrals when it suited their military tactics. Nazi Germany (besides all of its other crimes) occupied neutral Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Belgium. The Soviet Union attacked the neutral Finns and gobbled up the neutral Baltic States. The British invaded neutral Iceland and neutral Iran while their allies in the Pacific invaded the neutral Portuguese colony of (East) Timor. In other words, the Swedish Government had every reason to fear an invasion from its immediate neighbors, but not from Japan.

Economically, too, Swedish dependence on trade with European belligerents presented a particular weakness in negotiations, while its trade interests with Japan were modest at best. In 1938 less than 1 percent of Swedish imports were sourced from Japan while only 1.4 percent of exports went there.⁹ Although Japan was Sweden’s largest trading partner in Asia, it was not a vital market, not in comparison to its bellicose neighbors for which, in the same year, 21 percent of imports came from Germany, 16 from the United States, and 12 from Britain respectively.¹⁰ (Figure 1.1)

Figure 1.1 Swedish imports and exports for selected countries in 1938 Source: Statistiska Centralbyrån, Statistisk årsbok för Sverige, 1939, 168–169.

As unexceptional as these trading numbers are, it is noteworthy that diplomacy and trade with the Empire continued throughout the wartime period.¹¹ In fact, it is one of the arguments of this book that Sweden continued to trade with Japan while simultaneously protesting against its unlawful expansionism. Considering how dire Sweden’s situation in Europe was, it is, however, somewhat puzzling that Stockholm did not simply recall its diplomats and expatriates after Japan entered the war with the Allies—all the more so if one considers how hostile the Empire had become to European foreigners.¹² In August 1940, more than a year before the outbreak of the War in the Pacific, a Reuters journalist, M.J. Cox, died during police detention. He fell from the third floor of the building where he was interrogated. Japanese Military Police claimed suicide but the international community in Tokyo drew a different conclusion, suspecting murder.¹³ Another British national, Frederik Ringer, who served as Swedish Consul in Nagasaki also died the same year while in detention, prompting even long-term European residents in Japan to leave the country. The tenser the international situation got, the worse Japanese military repression against foreign nationals became. Widar Bagge reported at the time that “the possibility of Japan’s entry into the war carries special risks for its white inhabitants in view of the strong increase in xenophobia.”¹⁴ So, why then the continuous engagement? It would have been possible for Stockholm to evacuate the roughly one-hundred expatriates—even after Pearl Harbor. But the UD decided not to do so. This book will explain the history of Stockholm’s decision to remain engaged with Japan from its first unlawful blunders in Manchuria until the bitter end after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. What were the motives? Who were the actors? And how did economic, political, and diplomatic considerations intertwine? In short, why and how did Sweden engage with Japan during its wartime period?

To find answers, we analyze four dimensions of Swedish–Japanese interactions. First, the international context in which the two countries operated. Second, the national political debates in the Riksdag (Swedish Parliament), Government, and popular media (mainly newspapers, books, and magazines). Third, economic interactions as recorded in trade statistics, reports, and telegrams. And fourth, the diplomacy between the two states based on a study of original documents. Some of the episodes that this book discusses have already been explored by historians but much of it draws on new sources from Swedish and Japanese archives.¹⁵ Together, these documents tell the story of the relationship between Scandinavia’s last wartime-neutral and a belligerent faraway.¹⁶

Neutrality and the problem of being friends with enemies

The importance of neutrality for Sweden’s foreign policy during World War II can hardly be overemphasized. While most other countries (and their colonies) in Europe, North America, and Asia sunk into the chaos of total war, Sweden did not have enemies—at least not formally. On the diplomatic level, Stockholm did not differentiate between Japan, China, the USSR, Germany, or the United States. It maintained friendly relations with all of them. The problem was that Sweden’s “friends” were at war with each other, which naturally created pressures from all sides. To be friends with enemies came at the cost of criticism from all of them for not supporting their war efforts—or for granting too many favors to the respective enemy. Whenever Swedish foreign policy was supportive to one side, it could be sure to arouse the anger of the other. The dilemma was best expressed by one of Sweden’s most prominent foreign policymakers of the twentieth century, Östen Undén, foreign minister (1924–1926 and 1945–1962), who once privately conceded that this “fact must perhaps be accepted with resignation, but the apostles of neutrality will never be heralded as the liberators of mankind.”¹⁷ Neutrals could not expect much understanding from either side of the war for not supporting their cause.

Even worse, there was little prospect that belligerents would recognize the rights of neutral countries out of love for international law, and there were no mechanisms to guarantee the rights. After all, the international order of the League of Nations had been dysfunctional ever since the League’s failure to punish Japan for its aggression against China in 1931 and had collapsed completely after Italy’s campaign against Abyssinia in 1936. The Law of Neutrality, which was a part of international law (developed over centuries but formalized at the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907), was, in this sense, mere guidelines for the dos and don’ts of neutral states, but it was not at all a guarantee against aggression. The UD had no illusions about the gravity of the situation and the relative vulnerability of Sweden. In April 1939, Erik Boheman, the state secretary for foreign affairs (the UD’s highest-ranking civil servant), drafted a note that was approved by Foreign Minister Rickard Sandler and circulated among the highest ranks of Sweden’s foreign policymakers, including Prime Minister Per Albin Hansson and the ex-f...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Lists of figures, pictures, and tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• List of abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• 2 In the beginning: Early Swedish–Japanese relations
• 3 Trade under protest: A war in all but name
• 4 Fading protest: Total war in China
• 5 Staying relevant: Total war in Europe
• 6 Fully engaged: Total war in the Pacific
• 7 In the end: Widar Bagge, Japan, and the end of World War II
• 8 Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Appendix
• Index