Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
- until 1943-44, when Allied pressure had become more convincing than the failing
German war machine.
Sweden became the recipient of countless refugees from the rest of Scandinavia and
the Baltic. Instrumental in this process was
Raoul Wallenberg
, who rescued Hungarian
Jews from the SS and persuaded the Swedish government to give him diplomatic status
in 1944. Anything up to 35,000 Jews in Hungary were sheltered in “neutral houses”
(flying the Swedish flag), and fed and clothed by Wallenberg. But when Soviet troops
liberated Budapest in 1945, Wallenberg was arrested as a suspected spy and disappeared;
he was later reported to have died in prison in Moscow in 1947. However, unconfirmed
accounts had him alive in a Soviet prison as late as 1975; in 1989 some of his surviving
relatives flew to Moscow in an unsuccessful attempt to discover the truth about his fate.
The end of the war was to engender a serious crisis of conscience in the country.
Though physically unscathed, Sweden was now vulnerable to
Cold War
politics. The
Finns had agreed to let Soviet troops march unhindered through Finland, and in 1949
this led neighbouring Sweden to refuse to follow the other Scandinavian countries into
NATO
. The country did, however, much to conservative disquiet, return into Stalin's
hands most of the Baltic and German refugees who had fought against Russia during
the war - their fate is not difficult to guess.
Postwar politics
The wartime coalition quickly gave way to a purely Social Democratic government
committed to welfare provision and increased defence expenditure - now
non-participation in military alliances did not mean a throwing-down of weapons.
Tax increases and a trade slump lost the Social Democrats seats in the 1948 general
election, and by 1951 they needed to enter into a
coalition
with the Agrarian (later the
Centre) Party to survive. This coalition lasted until 1957, when disputes over the form
of a proposed extension to the pension system brought it down. An inconclusive
referendum and the withdrawal of the Centre Party from government forced an
election. Although the Centre gained seats and the Conservatives replaced the Liberals
as the main opposition party, the Social Democrats retained a (slim) majority.
Sweden regained much of its international moral respect (lost directly after World
War II) through the election of
Dag Hammarskjöld
as Secretary-General of the United
Nations in 1953. His strong leadership greatly enhanced the prestige (and effectiveness)
of the organization, which under his guidance participated in the solution of the 1956
Suez crisis and the 1958 Lebanon-Jordan affair. He was killed in an air crash in 1961,
towards the end of his second five-year term.
Domestic reform continued unabated throughout the 1950s and 1960s. It was
during these years that the country laid the foundations of its much-vaunted social
security system, although at the time it didn't always bear close scrutiny. A
National
Health Service
gave free hospital treatment, but only allowed for small refunds on
doctor's fees and the costs of medicines and dental treatment - hardly as far-reaching as
the British system introduced immediately after the war.
The Social Democrats stayed in power until 1976, when a
non-Social Democrat
coalition
(Centre-Liberal-Moderate) finally unseated them. In the 44 years since 1932,
the socialists had been an integral part of government in Sweden, their role tempered
1974
1976
1976
1986
ABBA win Eurovision
Song Contest in
Brighton, England
Social Democrats lose
power after forty years
Swedish king, Carl
Gustav, marries German
commoner
Olof Palme assassinated
