The position of a border state is not a comfortable one in any case. But there is an essential difference between Sweden’s position as a border state in the northwestern extremity of Europe and that of the border states south of her on the Continent. Sweden’s eastward land frontier is only a relatively short one, adjoining Finland. To the west Sweden parallels her brother-country for several hundred miles. All her other frontiers are sea frontiers.
This fortunate situation has significantly helped Sweden to remain a free country since the rigorous and vigorous times, ten centuries ago, when the Vikings were the scourge of western Europe. Despite the pride which today’s Swedes take in their Viking background, there appears to be scant resemblance between the marauding Viking and the contemporary Swede. The Vikings were small, swarthy men, suffering from bad teeth and malnutrition. Today’s Swede is the tallest man in Europe, a fair-haired and fair-skinned giant enjoying excellent health.
The Vikings pioneered the Blitzkrieg by their practice of lurking along the French or Flemish coasts near a village, waiting until the men had left, and then rushing ashore to capture women and other booty. And the tempestuous temper of the Vikings set a martial pattern for the Swedes down through the 17th century, when Sweden was one of Europe’s Great Powers and Gustav II Adolf (Gustavus Adolphus) and Charles XII were scribbling their names on history’s turbulent pages. Those lusty and gusty times have been replaced in Sweden by a firm will to peace, such that for the past 150 years the country has not been at war. On the other hand, the national determination for defense remains strong.
The Swedes are not so fatuous as to believe they could hold out, single-handedly and indefinitely, against the determined all-out attack of a super-power. Thus the Riksdag, or Swedish national parliament, has formulated the country’s defense policy in these words: “Our defense should be of such power that an attack on Sweden would demand such a contribution, make imperative such a consumption of forces and take so long a time that there would be no reasonable proportions to the advantages that an enemy could achieve.” Toward this national objective the four major political parties in February, 1958, joined in a common decision about the extent of the defense effort for the immediate future. This display of unity is in commendable contrast to the violent parliamentary debates about defense which characterize many other countries.
In implementation of this program it is planned that during the next fiscal year the military outlay will total about $548,000,000, an increase of $40,000,000 over the current expenditure. The Air Force will get about $220,000,000 of the larger figure, the Army about $194,000,000 and the Navy will be expected to straggle along with a mere $84,000,000. The other $50,000,000 are earmarked for measures and equipment of importance to all three services.
Besides the three major defense arms just mentioned, Sweden’s defense capacity is augmented by an extensive civil defense, program for the protection of the people, active volunteer organizations for local defense and a well- prepared economic, industrial, and psychological capability for defense. A further factor in the nation’s defense pattern has to do with terrain. Sweden is a large area of relatively sparse population, a rugged and rocky land where shelters can be and are being built to offer good resistance to strategic bombing. For any prospective land invader the short northeast frontier in common with Finland is inaccessible and would involve a considerable expenditure of time to no great purpose. A water invasion across the Baltic Sea is certainly not out of consideration but would call for rather substantial forces to counter the Swedish naval and air power. Thus the defense objective as stated by the Riksdag may not be impossible of realization.
The Army
As suggested, an invasion of Sweden would come over the land frontier, across the Baltic, by air to interior points—or by some combination of these. Thus the task of the Swedish army is to fight those invading forces which have not been repelled by the Navy and Air Force and to aid in the defense of strategic places and establishments against attack from the air—manned or missile.
Because of the large land area and its comparatively few inhabitants, the country’s entire defense potential has to be kept readily available. Thus every able-boded male Swede beginning at the age of eighteen has to do 304 days of service, plus a further 180 days if of officer rank. Each such man is given training in some branch of defense, all three services being based on general conscription. Sweden has no “standing army” except for a cadre of permanent, professional officers, warrant officers, and petty officers. All others are conscripts except for a limited number who avail themselves of a voluntary enlistment alternative. During succeeding years and into middle fife each man has to serve three additional periods of thirty days each. The completely mobilized army would total about half a million men.
The conscripts are assigned to different types of units according to their degree of mobility. The younger and better trained of the men are in units for mobile warfare, while the other and older men are assigned to units of diminished mobility for local or stationary defense. During recent years the pattern of the mobile units has been drastically changed. Instead of large bodies of troops too immobile for atomic-age combat, infantry and armored brigades have been established to facilitate greater mobility. Further developments in the Swedish Army look toward increased individual fire power, stepped up and more mobile artillery support, better communication facilities, and tactical adaptation to atomic warfare.
The Air Force
The Air Force is primarily charged with the air defense of the country but also has the task of co-operating with the other services in resisting attempted invasion, which includes reconnaissance and watch over territories and seas. As direct air defense has top priority, more than two-thirds of the total strength of the Air Force is in fighter craft and accessories. There are 33 fighter squadrons and thirteen fighter-bomber squadrons.
In a country whose 173,000 square miles are sprawled out over a stretch of nearly 1,000 miles, it is recognized that complete fighter protection over this entire expanse is beyond consideration. Thus, of necessity, the favored areas are those around Stockholm on the east, Gothenburg on the west, and the southern part of the country. Fighter defense with its bases and direction centers is vulnerable in any case, but in Sweden vulnerability has to a considerable extent been reduced by spreading the air fields, blasting hangars and servicing facilities out of the rock and providing reserves and alternates for the direction centers. The same measures have also been adopted with regard to the attack and reconnaissance forces.
Being of an advanced technical mind, as the Swedes are, their Air Force has strived toward and has achieved a high technical standard. A considerable number of aircraft have been bought abroad, especially in Great Britain, the most recent of such purchases being the Hawker-Hunter supersonic fighter. But the greater bulk of the Swedish Air Force planes came from the advanced and aggressive Saab Aircraft Company, who are also manufacturers of the Saab motor car now being sold in the United States. The newest Saab fighter, the delta-wing Draken (Dragon), is said to compare very favorably performance-wise with anything the international market offers, not excluding American and British fighters. Another Saab model is the new Lansen (Lance).
In Sweden the Air Force faces the same questions and quandaries which furrow brows in other of the world’s air forces, namely the change from the age of the airplane to that of the guided missile. Sweden’s defense received its first impetus toward missile experiment and development in the fall of 1943, when the Navy Yard in Stockholm received some thirty crates of seemingly meaningless metal scrap, the remnants of two mysterious projectiles which had landed and exploded in southern Sweden. After a month or two of fitting and fiddling, the pieces were put together in a sort of three-dimensional jig-saw puzzle, and this yielded essential data on the first of the German so-called V-l’s of World War II. Plans were made for a Swedish missile and by 1946 the Saab research and development men had completed the prototype of a home-grown Swedish missile.
These studies led to work begun in 1949- 50 on two guided missiles which were recently demonstrated, both believed to represent an advanced stage of the art. One of them, known officially as 304, is an air-to-ground missile for use against both land and sea targets. The other, bearing the number 315, but popularly known as the Agathon, will be fired from ships or coastal batteries against floating targets.
Sweden has also purchased missiles abroad. The Army has a French anti-tank missile and another type, also of French origin, is about to be test-fired by the Coast Artillery.
Civil Defense
In this population of seven and a half million people, 900,000 men and women are enrolled in civil defense, their task being to hinder, fight, and counter an enemy’s actions, especially the destruction by strategic bombing. Extensive and far-reaching evacuation has been planned for the larger cities and amazingly well-thought-out shelters have been provided for those who remain in the cities. Largest of these is the Katerina shelter in Stockholm, 120 feet down in the solid rock, built at a cost of $1,000,000 and with accommodations for 20,000 persons. This and other shelters either completed or under construction in centers throughout Sweden will provide sanctuary for 2,000,000 people.
With one Swede in eight already enrolled for Civil Defense, even more extensive steps are under development to make this program more effective. These measures include the creation of special mobile forces, better training for those in command, the building of additional shelters, and the providing of more material. Though Civil Defense is, in principle, voluntary, the Ministry of the Interior can conscript to this service any one it needs between the ages of sixteen and 65.
Within the voluntary organizations is a special branch called the Home Guard and which, in peacetime and in event of war, operates as part of the Army. It is made up of a large number of small units which can snap into action for local defense purposes, such as combatting sabotage, repelling small surprise attacks, etc. Among other voluntary defense organizations is the Lotta Corps, a group of women trained in field cooking, communications, plotting, air-raid warnings, and office work.
The Navy
Situated at a strategic point in the defense plan of northern Europe, Sweden occupies half of the front between West and East. The Swedish-Danish entrance to—or exit from— the Baltic Sea is a focal point of the utmost importance to any program of operations in the northwestern European area. Throughout history control of the entrance to the Baltic has been the subject of intense fighting between the Russians, Danes, Swedes, Dutch, and British. Command of this small stretch in any prospective war would determine whether the Russian Baltic Fleet and its swarm of submarines got out or the transports and fighting craft of the Western Powers got in.
The straits at Oresund—so narrow at one point that during the war refugees from Denmark were able to swim that tricky passage—divide Sweden’s coastal waters. The Swedish coast beginning at the uppermost end of the Gulf of Bothnia down to a point not far above Stockholm is designated Naval Command North. The next span of coast, down to the small shipbuilding city of Oskarshamn, is called Naval Command East. The third stretch, southward past the naval base at Karlskrona, through the Sound and to a point opposite the northern tip of Denmark, is Naval Command South. And the remainder of Sweden’s coast, past Gothenburg and to the Norwegian border, is Naval Command West.
Presiding over it all as Commander in Chief of the entire Royal Navy of Sweden is Vice Admiral Stig H:son Ericson.
The Swedish coastline—rocky and rugged on the western flank, more forested and mellow on the Baltic and Bothnian side—is a great expanse of rocks, islets and inlets, small islands and large, navigable rivers, promontories and peninsulas, ports and harbors, coves and bays. And if this sort of coastal terrain presents tempting spots for a prospective enemy landing, even more it provides abundant places where the meditative and discerning Swedes have blasted out the primeval granite and installed large underground ports and supply facilities, practically immune to enemy detection and from which the defenders can emerge to harass the invader.
The prime task of the Swedish Navy is to forestall invasion if possible and to repel it if it does get through. Historically, coastal attacks on Sweden have always been involved and hazardous for the attacker, and it is the aim of present-day Swedish naval policy to maintain this status.
Under the King in Council as titular head of the nation’s fighting power comes the Supreme Commander Armed Forces, General Nils Swedlund. Under him is the C-in-C Naval Forces, Admiral Ericson. And in turn, under him are the officers who command the fighting forces, the coast artillery units, the helicopter fleet, the bases and training establishments, the coast-watching service, and dockyards and supply. The Royal Swedish Coast Artillery is an integral factor in the pattern of naval warfare but is also a vital element in the mainland defense set-up through its system of fixed defenses in areas especially susceptible to attempted invasion.
The problems confronting the Swedish Navy are obviously not those of a great-power fleet, which may have to steam 10,000 miles to fight an engagement. For defense Sweden has a balanced light fleet—balanced in that it includes all types of vessels that may be demanded for naval operations in the Baltic and adjacent waters, and light in that speedy, highly maneuverable vessels up to light cruisers predominate. There are no large units because such ships are not suited to the theater of prospective operation and because the possibility or even likelihood of atomic attack makes it not feasible to concentrate on a small number of major units.
The Royal Swedish Navy is at present made up of the following:
Light Cruisers |
3 |
Destroyers (over 2,500 tons) |
8 |
Destroyers (under 2,500 tons) |
13 |
Large Motor-Torpedoboats |
12 |
Small Motor-Torpedoboats |
25 |
Submarines |
27 |
Frigates |
6 |
Minelayers |
12 |
Minesweepers |
46 |
Patrol Vessels |
40 |
Supply & Training Ships |
30 |
Eight large and four small helicopters are scheduled for delivery during 1958-59. |
For several hundred years the Swedish fleet has had three main bases—Stockholm, Karls- krona, on the southern Baltic tip of the country, and Gothenburg, the west coast shipping and shipbuilding center. However, all three of these would be considered close to worthless in event of aerial or atomic attack. Thus the naval base in the heart of the Stockholm harbor and facing the Royal Palace is to be relocated out in the archipelago, its docks, slipways, and work-shops hidden underground. Several other such bases have already been established along Sweden’s coastline.
Blasted out of the very hard rock of Sweden —as is the city of Stockholm itself—these bases are capable of providing protection from attack, even from the air, as well as a full catalog of maintenance facilities. These include not only all needed services for surface craft and submarines, but also transfer provisions for casualties, ammunition and food stores and oil and water servicing.
In addition to these extensive underground harbors there are a number of concealed berthing sites where warships can lie under screening or overhanging cliffs and be camouflaged to blend with the surroundings. These berthing spots are widely dispersed at many points along the Swedish coast so that a bomb from the air would not knock out more than one or two ships. The berthing bases are approachable by sea only through a maze of tricky and tortuous waterways, small islands, barely submerged rocks, and other traps for the unwary.
When General Swedlund was reappointed last year to another three-year term as Supreme Commander Armed Forces, the announcement was not the source of unmixed jubilation among his sturdy compatriots. One outspoken Stockholm newspaper ran the story under the one-word caption, “Why?” Even a military journal had opposed his reappointment, and the reaction of Navy men to the news was expressed in terms they had not lisped as children at nursery school.
In October, 1957, Monsieur le General published a proposal anent the future composition of the nation’s armed forces. He proposed a much greater allotment to the Air Force, left the Army’s appropriation about as it was, and, brooding on budget limitations, urged heavy cut-backs in Navy funds. Naval spokesmen and many others not directly in that branch were convinced that this sorry state of affairs had been fostered and fomented by the predominant influence of Army thinking in the top defense organizations. Some of the multi-lingual officers of the Swedish Navy, many of whom speak English as well as you and I, were grimly referring to the naval force as “the naval farce” and one writer on navy matters sarcastically identified the mess as “The Pearl Harbor of the Swedish Navy.”
For years General Swedlund’s principal hobby and form of relaxation had been cruising in Stockholm’s beautiful blue archipelago in his expensively outfitted yawl, Rico. Five years ago Rico was destroyed in a fire which swirled through the yard where she was laid up for the winter. With her loss, say some of the stronger anti-Swedlund men, passed his interest in anything that floats.
Even at best and with the influence of the Army at minimum, what the Swedlund proposal comes down to would be a 40% reduction in the number of ships in the Swedish Navy and a 30% cut-back in the number of coastal batteries. The Riksdag has not yet acted on the matter but present indications are that the percentage of the total amount of funds available for the three services might be about as below, in which the first column represents the proportion of present allotments for national defense and the second column the probable coming appropriations:
|
Now |
Future |
Army |
36% |
33-35% |
Navy |
18% |
13-15% |
Air Force |
36% |
38-40% |
Expenses in common |
10% |
12% |
now in building and the scrapping of a considerable number of older ships. What the long-term effect would be on their branch of the service is something the Navy men do not care to contemplate.
The Atom
Sweden’s position as to her possible participation in the atomic warfare scramble is not entirely clear. In one respect the Swedes are more fortunate than many countries for Sweden has all the necessary “ingredients” for this type of weapon, prominently including some of the world’s foremost nuclear physicists. General Swedlund has pointed out that nuclear weapons are imperative to a modern defense system and has stated that he does not want to ask his soldiers io fight an enemy who is not only superior numerically but who also has nuclear weapons.
Defense spokesmen are pressing for a decision now if the country is to have its own manufacture of atomic weapons at an advanced production level by the mid-1960’s. And it is believed that Sweden could conduct atomic bomb tests within its own borders, in far-northern Lapland.
The leadership of the Conservative Party is for atomic weapons, though the attitude of the rank-and-file may not be entirely certain. No one has to check the facts to surmise that the very miniscule Communist Party is opposed to the whole idea. The position of the Social Democrats, of the Liberals and of the Center or Agrarian Party seems to be a case of, “Yes—and then, again, no.” The tight and tough times we live in cannot be ignored. On the other hand, Sweden is one of the many countries that have spoken up for a suspension of all atomic tests pending a clarification of such questions as public health, the genetic problems involved and other long- range and large-scale humanitarian aspects of the entire atomic bomb question.
Public debate on the issue will certainly keep the military waiting for a final decision. But that there is public debate is at least a good thing.
Note: Photographs for this article have been obtained by the author from official Swedish sources.