Nordic

Investigating the Political Project Behind Bollhusmötet

Master’s thesis (45 credits) Author’s name: Erik Blohmé Name of supervisor: Heléne Lööw Semester: Spring 2021 Date of Submission: May 17, 2021

HISTORISKA INSTITUTIONEN

Abstract

This thesis investigates the political project behind the infamous tennis hall meeting, commonly referred to as Bollhusmötet, that took place in February of 1939 in , . Gathering in the local tennis hall, the members of the Uppsala Student Union decided to send a resolution to the Swedish king protesting the reception of Jewish refugees into Sweden in the wake of the 1938 November . The protest was widely influential, spurring similar resolutions at other universities and arguably influencing Swedish refugee policy on a national level. The event itself was orchestrated by a group of nationalist students as part of a political project aiming to establish a Nordic power bloc with Sweden as the central power. This political milieu rejected the geopolitics of both England and to promote a specific form of Nordic fascism. was a central part of their ideology, both regarding short- and long-term goals, and antisemitism was also the ultimate motive behind the tennis hall meeting. The architects of these events joined the mainstream conservative milieu in 1940 as part of a strategy to abolish the Swedish political system from within and restructure the Swedish state according to a fascist model bearing many similarities to national socialism.

Keywords: Bollhusmötet, Heimdal, Den Svenska Linjen, Arvid Fredborg, fascism, antisemitism, national socialism, .

Acknowledgments

I would like to express my gratitude to Heléne Lööw who has supervised this thesis with patience, honesty, and great care. I would also like to thank Lars M. Andersson who has been a great help through discussions, reading recommendations, and advice. This thesis would not exist without their guidance and working together to craft it has been a very rewarding experience. Finally, I would like to extend my thanks to my classmates, whose support, humor and advice have lightened the load of research and writing considerably.

1 "On the stretcher, this I can tell you now already, you will always find him lying face down, and even if you turn him over five times, he will still be facing the wrong way."

Thomas Mann, Doctor Faustus

2 Table of Contents

Abstract ...... 1 Acknowledgments ...... 1 Introduction ...... 5 Mes congratulations ...... 5 Relevance today: Recent debate about the tennis hall meeting ...... 8 Research aim and questions ...... 11 Material and method ...... 12 Material ...... 12 Fredborg’s archival material about Bollhusmötet ...... 13 Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939 and The Swedish Line...... 14 Destination: Berlin ...... 15 Method ...... 15 Theoretical perspectives ...... 17 Ideology ...... 17 Doublespeak ...... 19 Historical background ...... 20 Sweden’s political landscape 1933 – 1940 ...... 20 Antisemitism ...... 22 Antisemitism and modernity ...... 24 ...... 25 Propagandistic vs. peripheral antisemitism ...... 27 Race biology and eugenics ...... 28 Fascism, Nazism, and the far-right ...... 30 Fascism ...... 30 Nazism ...... 32 Far/Extreme Right ...... 34 The National Movement...... 35 The question of loyalty to Germany ...... 35 ...... 36 The conservative movement ...... 38 The League of Sweden ...... 40 The Fredborg circle examined ...... 42 Who was Arvid Fredborg? ...... 42 Who were Arvid Fredborg’s friends? ...... 46 The tennis hall meeting ...... 50 Lead-up to the tennis hall meeting ...... 50 Bollhusmötet ...... 55 The arguments examined ...... 56 The race arguments interpreted ...... 59 The job scarcity arguments interpreted ...... 62 The aftermath ...... 63 Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939 ...... 64 The Heimdal association ...... 64 Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939 examined ...... 65

3 Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939 interpreted ...... 71 The Swedish Line ...... 76 The origins of The Swedish Line ...... 76 The Swedish Line examined ...... 79 The Swedish Line interpreted...... 86 The political project of the Fredborg circle ...... 92 Who were the people behind the meeting? ...... 92 What were their motives? ...... 93 What was their overarching political vision? ...... 94 Fredborg’s contradictions ...... 95 Nordic Fascism or National Socialism? ...... 97 Bibliography ...... 100 Primary sources ...... 100 Literature...... 102

4 Introduction

Mes congratulations

On February 18 of 1939, student, writer, and right-wing activist Arvid Fredborg received a telegram that simply stated “Mes congratulations”, signed “Louis”.1 The day before, February 17 of 1939, was a big day for Fredborg and many of his friends - “Bollhusmötet”, roughly translated into “the tennis hall meeting”, was apparently perceived as a triumph by Fredborg and those working with him to organize it. In his huge archive of diaries and letters, organized by Fredborg himself, the material relating to the tennis hall meeting has been given a box of its own, neatly organized in chronological order, complete with personal letters, postcards, news articles, and telegrams. It stands out from the other capsules in his so-called “Private archive” as they are simply marked by year while this one is marked by name – “1939: The Student Union meeting (Bollhusmötet), the refugee question and Heimdal’s yearly review”. Fredborg will be properly introduced in the subchapter “Who is Arvid Fredborg?” – but for now, the nature of the event most central to this study, Bollhusmötet, needs to be explained. To understand Fredborg’s victory, it is necessary to look a few months back. On November 7 of 1938, a polish Jew was arrested for an attack on the German embassy in Paris, seriously injuring the Legion Secretary Ernst vom Rath. When vom Rath died from his injuries two days later on the night of November 9, civilian mobs attacked German in the streets and vandalized synagogues, Jewish stores, and residences all over Germany – an event known as the November Pogrom, or the “” (“the crystal night”) as it was called during most of the twentieth century. It was a semi-coordinated series of events encouraged and stoked by German official authorities. 36 people were killed, 20 000 Jews arrested and sent to concentration camps, and Jews themselves were forced to pay for the damages caused during these – a total sum of one billion Deutschmarks.2 In Sweden, the event and its consequences spurred an aggressive debate that caused disunion between and within political circles3 - those who were pro-German were now trying to find a balance between understanding Germany's motives while condemning its violence.4 In Swedish media, newspaper headlines told of the horrors that German Jews had been subjected to. In the reporting immediately following the “Kristallnacht”, newspaper Dagens Nyheter described the events as “horrible mass terror” and Göteborgs-Posten used the phrase

1 to Arvid Fredborg, “Telegram,” 1939, Arvid Fredborg: Efterlämnade papper. 2 Ingvar Svanberg and Mattias Tydén, Sverige Och Förintelsen: Debatt Och Dokument Om Europas Judar 1933-1945, 3rd ed. (: Dialogos förlag, 2005), 137. 3 Sverker Oredsson, Lunds universitet under andra världskriget: Motsättningar, debatter och hjälpinsatser (Malmö: Lunds universitetshistoriska sällskap, 1996), 51; Ola Larsmo, Djävulssonaten. Ur det svenska hatets historia. (Falun: Albert Bonniers Förlag, 2007), 38–41. 4 Svanberg and Tydén, Sverige Och Förintelsen: Debatt Och Dokument Om Europas Judar 1933-1945, 149.

5 “terrible excesses” to describe the pogrom.5 However, these condemnations were short-lived. While some newspapers continued to protest the “Kristallnacht”, like liberal Göteborgs Handels- och Sjöfartstidning or social-democratic The Social Democrat,6 others did not. In many Swedish newspapers, the initial strong condemnations soon gave way to indifference and embraced a German perspective.7 On November 12, Svenska Dagbladet wrote that the “Kristallnacht” was an “inner concern of Germany”, on November 13 Dagens Nyheter wanted to tone down the critique of foreign countries, and on November 28 Göteborgs-Posten wrote that the Jewish problem should not be a concern in the negotiations between the great powers. This readjustment was then coupled with arguments against immigration and the reception of Jewish refugees, in both left and right-wing newspapers.8 Nya Dagligt Allehanda, a newspaper close to Fredborg himself (see the section “Lead-up to the tennis hall meeting” in the chapter “The Fredborg circle examined”), was hesitant to lay the blame on Germany, stating in an editorial that it was “unfortunate” that pogroms should occur in a “civilized country”.9 Some publications, like -Tidningen, Sydsvenska Dagbladet, and Skånska Dagbladet, had a consistently pro-German perspective from the beginning, seeing the Jews as sharing the guilt of the “Kristallnacht”.10 While the precarity and danger that faced Jews in Germany had become common knowledge among all Swedish newspapers, many chose not to discuss or portray the situation beyond the initial newsflash, much less discuss or propose Swedish aid.11 It was the November Pogrom and the political turmoil that followed in its wake, that triggered the events central to this study. Bollhusmötet and all the controversy surrounding it should be understood as a reaction to the “Kristallnacht”. University students were among the first to discuss Jewish refugees in Sweden in the wake of the pogrom, and among the first to react politically. On December 17 of 1938, some students in Uppsala sent a petition addressed to the Swedish prime minister and social minister urging them to assist refugees. These students belonged to various popular movements, Christian associations, and sobriety organizations, as well as the social- democratic student association Laboremus and liberal/humanist association Verdandi. The petition was written because said students were rightfully anticipating more refugees in the wake of the “Kristallnacht” that took place about a month before.12 Different forms of refugee aid

5 Göran Leth, Konstruktionen Av En Likgiltighet – ›Kristallnatten‹ i Svenska Tidningar, ed. Charlotte Haider (Vällingby: Forum för levande historia, 2005), 11. 6 Leth, 16–18. 7 Leth, 20. 8 Leth, 20–22. 9 Svanberg and Tydén, Sverige Och Förintelsen: Debatt Och Dokument Om Europas Judar 1933-1945, 148. 10 Leth, Konstruktionen Av En Likgiltighet – ›Kristallnatten‹ i Svenska Tidningar, 23–25; Svanberg and Tydén, Sverige Och Förintelsen: Debatt Och Dokument Om Europas Judar 1933-1945, 148–49. 11 Leth, Konstruktionen Av En Likgiltighet – ›Kristallnatten‹ i Svenska Tidningar, 7. 12 Larsmo, Djävulssonaten. Ur det svenska hatets historia., 35–43.

6 initiatives sprung up or intensified all over Sweden during this time, crossing over previously rigid confessional and political dividing lines.13 A counter-reaction soon followed. On January 18 of 1939, newspaper Svenska Dagbladet published the article “Swedish import of doctors raise protests” about the protests against the planned reception of ten Jewish refugees with medical professions. During February 1939, protests against the reception of Jewish refugees continued as several commercial entities and labor organizations sent a petition to the Swedish king and government with worries about job scarcity and the alleged corrupt practices of Jewish people, emphasizing the importance of racial purity in Sweden.14 On February 6, a protest meeting in Stockholm organized by Nazis together with student organizations protested the admittance of Jewish refugees, and during the coming months meetings would be organized at Uppsala, Stockholm, and by student unions and organizations, all resulting in resolutions against the admittance of Jewish refugees.15 It was during this time a group of political outsiders started to act. English student Arvid Fredborg and law students Thor Åke Leissner, Igor Holmstedt, and Erik Anners, to name a few, used their key positions in the student organizations to set a grander plan in motion (these individuals will be introduced in detail later, see the section “Who were Arvid Fredborg’s friends?”). Their coordinated efforts were successful - Uppsala University Student Union decided to write a resolution addressed to the Swedish king, asking that Sweden turn away the Jewish medical professionals. Uppsala students were summoned to a meeting in the student tennis hall, Bollhuset, to discuss the resolution and vote on it. During the meeting, a new version of the resolution with sharper wording won the vote - a part of the original resolution where the students expressed sympathy for the difficult situation of the refugees was crossed out, as was the call for other relief efforts.16 In Arvid Fredborg’s archive (described in the chapter “Material”), he has himself collected and organized newspaper clippings from the many articles about the tennis hall meeting, and some from the period shortly before the meeting took place. One of the first items presented to anyone who opens the capsule is an article demanding to know – where do the students stand on the question of admitting Jewish refugees? There is already a clear consensus, transcending political affiliation, ideology, and social groups, the article claims – everyone wants “an effective control over the flow of refugees”. If the students speak up, maybe the rest of society will follow, the author suggests. As previously mentioned, other student movements certainly followed Uppsala’s example, especially Lund University who adopted a similar resolution on March 2 of 1939. It has

13 Oredsson, Lunds universitet under andra världskriget: Motsättningar, debatter och hjälpinsatser, 59–60. 14 Larsmo, Djävulssonaten. Ur det svenska hatets historia., 46; Oredsson, Lunds universitet under andra världskriget: Motsättningar, debatter och hjälpinsatser, 61. 15 Oredsson, Lunds universitet under andra världskriget: Motsättningar, debatter och hjälpinsatser, 62; Oredsson, 63; Oredsson, 66. 16 Larsmo, Djävulssonaten. Ur det svenska hatets historia., 49.

7 been suggested, both by Fredborg himself and his critics, that Bollhusmötet strengthened the already restrictive national policy on refugee admittance, delaying any substantial reception of Jewish refugees into Sweden.17 For example, the tennis hall meeting was explicitly cited as an argument against the proposal of funding “the subsistence and education of refugees” by members of parliament on February 27 of 1939.18 It was not until the deportation of Norwegian Jews in 1942 and the occupation of Denmark in 1943 that Swedish refugee admittance policy changed and Sweden started receiving refugees fleeing across Öresund.19 However much the student resolution delayed this policy change is hard to measure in definite terms, yet, that the original intent of the tennis hall meeting and its resolution was to restrict the admittance of refugees is indisputable, even if motives might have varied among the participants of Bollhusmötet. However, the victory that Fredborg received congratulations for was not, as some still may claim, a misguided victory for a certain brand of labor protectionism. For Fredborg and his circle, it was a victory over a racially inferior outside enemy threatening to undermine and eradicate the Swedish people. More than that – this study will show that the tennis hall meeting was also a victory for a short-lived brand of Nordic fascism spearheaded by Arvid Fredborg and his political allies.

Relevance today: Recent debate about the tennis hall meeting

In the aftermath of the meeting, the events that transpired were described in a variety of ways, ranging from a peaceful and noble oath to an antisemitic riot, depending on which newspaper you read. Stockholms-Tidningen described the meeting as “calm and balanced” while Dagens Nyheter has a more sinister view of the event, writing that “Nazis and half-Nazis” took advantage of the situation.20 However, even after Germany lost the war and decades passed, the narrative about Bollhusmötet has not ceased to be a contested territory. The debate about what was said, who was responsible, and what effects it had arisen several times during the twentieth and twenty-first century. There have been several notable spikes in the debate in recent times, which are noticeable when searching for the keyword “Bollhusmötet” and “Arvid Fredborg” in the Newspaper archive Retriever which goes back about 25 years. The most substantial debates occur in 2000 around October, and then again in February and March of 2006. In 2000, the tennis hall meeting was suddenly brought to public attention when Swedish historian Herman Lindqvist was forced to retract 100 000 copies of his new book Drömmar och verklighet (“Dreams and Reality”) where he falsely claimed that author, professor, and member of the

17 Arvid Fredborg, Destination: Berlin (Malmö: P.A. Nordstedt & Sönders Förlag, 1985), 143. 18 Larsmo, Djävulssonaten. Ur det svenska hatets historia., 95–99. 19 Oredsson, Lunds universitet under andra världskriget: Motsättningar, debatter och hjälpinsatser, 179; Larsmo, Djävulssonaten. Ur det svenska hatets historia., 95–96. 20 “Kårdirektionens Förslag Besvarar Frågan Med ‘Jaså’.,” Stockholms-Tidningen, February 18, 1939, Arvid Fredborg: Efterlämnade papper; “Uppsala Studenter Emot ‘Intellektuell Import,’” Dagens Nyheter, February 18, 1939, Arvid Fredborg: Efterlämnade papper.

8 Heimdal student association Karl-Gustaf Hildebrand was affiliated with Nazism.21 This mistake seemingly led to hesitation about laying blame on other actors and participants in the tennis hall meeting, as well as some unfortunate misunderstandings about the nature of the meeting. The events that transpired at Bollhusmötet are mentioned several times in this debate, however, the facts are often mixed up, simplified or incorrect. For example, in an opinion piece by author and historian Wilhelm Odelberg published in the newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, the meeting is described as a spontaneous discussion about national policies where a debate took place over the choice between a “harmless” compromise resolution based on tolerance and humanitarianism versus one that was hostile and protectionist.22 Three important facts are obscured by such a conception: 1. The meeting was not merely reactive to national policy but orchestrated as a proactive strategy by specific far-right and fascist political interests. 2. Both resolutions were against the admission of Jewish refugees, and the students who thought Sweden should welcome the medical professionals had no real voting alternative. 3. The arguments behind the resolutions were not merely protectionist, but largely antisemitic and eugenic. Arvid Fredborg appears in the periphery of the discussion. He is criticized in an opinion piece by writer and political scientist Svante Nycander where he is said to have been a member of Nazi organizations, while journalist PM Nilsson calls him a “black flag-writer” in another opinion piece in Expressen, suggesting he had fascist sympathies.23 Fredborg is then defended by critic and literary historian Peter Luthersson who finds these claims baseless24. Professor of political science Johan Tralau also defended Fredborg in response to the allegations, calling him “one of Sweden's most significant anti-Nazis”.25 It should be noted though, that Tralau is Fredborg’s grandson, revealing that the debate is conducted in part by partisan interests.26 Lindqvist himself also defended Fredborg as an apologetic, one of the few voices that admitted guilt in a time where everyone was guilty. 27 These claims, as closer examination will show in the later segments of this investigation, are dubious. This debate had a short revival again in 2012 when certain parts of Lindqvist's autobiography could once again be interpreted as portraying Hildebrand in a fraudulent way.28 Another debate about Bollhusmötet came to life in February 2006 when author Ola Larsmo wrote a play that reenacted the events of the tennis hall meeting, which was then performed in the actual locale when it had taken place in 1939. As a result, the Heimdal student association came

21 Ebba Von Essen, “Förlaget Tar Tillbaka Lindqvists Historiebok,” Aftonbladet, October 20, 2000. 22 Wilhelm Odelberg, “Hildebrand Uppmanade Studenterna Att Erkänna Sitt Humanitära Ansvar,” Svenska Dagbladet, October 19, 2000. 23 PM Nilsson, “Svenska Dagbladets Historieskrivning,” Expressen, October 31, 2000. 24 Peter Luthersson, “PM Nilsson Blandar Bort Korten,” Svenska Dagbladet, November 2, 2000. 25 Johan Tralau, “Fredborg Skrev När Flocken Teg,” Svenska Dagbladet, October 26, 2000. 26 Johan Tralau, “Kan Man Lita På Carolina?,” Svenska Dagbladet, October 26, 2000. 27 Herman Lindqvist, “En Lucka till En Länge Sluten Kloak,” Svenska Dagbladet, October 29, 2000. 28 Erika Josefsson, “Bonniers Drar in Lindqvists Biografi,” TT Spektra, August 13, 2012.

9 under pressure due to allegations of involvement in the meeting. When the chairman Christopher Lagerkvist denied that Heimdal had Nazi ties, Larsmo wore an opinion piece in Uppsala Nya Tidning questioning his categorical dismissal of any responsibility, arguing that Heimdal was one of the main conduits for the organizers of the tennis hall meeting, citing antisemitic passages from the Heimdal’s yearly review of 1939.29 Possibly prompted by this debate, the Heimdal student association published a white paper in May the same year concerning their involvement in the affair. In this document, the appointed researcher, economic historian Henrik Lindberg, claimed that the organization itself was never involved – it was a deed of mere individuals happening to associate with Heimdal.30 Instead, Heimdal shifted the blame towards the Uppsala Student Union.31 The debate continued through an essay in Dagens Nyheter, and now Fredborg became the focal point of the debate – Larsmo argues that he was the chief architect behind Bollhusmötet and that he never changed his ideological outlook but remained totalitarian all his life. He further argues that Fredborg’s deed as an anti-Nazi has been overstated, this time pointing out his supposed antisemitism and pro-German sentiments in the political pamphlet Den Svenska linjen (“The Swedish Line”) published 1940. Larsmo also argues that Fredborg’s famous Germany-critical book Bakom Stålvallen (“Behind the Steel Wall”) is overstated as an expression of anti-Nazism and that Fredborg’s reputation as someone who exposed should be questioned.32 Swedish writer and public intellectual Jan Myrdal then replies to this article by Larsmo. Myrdal writes that he actively worked for the republishing of the Behind the Steel Wall, not because it was groundbreaking or revealed anything to the wider public, but because Fredborg helped turn the Swedish away from Nazi sympathies by telling them “firsthand” about his experiences as a correspondent in Germany. He writes that Fredborg was simply a Swedish bourgeoise nationalist and, like many such nationalists at the time, he was opposed to immigration and concerned with the preservation of the Swedish people from a racial standpoint. Thanks to that , Myrdal argues, Fredborg opposed those who were faithful to German fascism.33 Responding to those arguments, Larsmo writes in another reply that “the nationally minded” faction of the Swedish right played a different and much more dangerous role in the political landscape during the second world war than what Myrdal claims. Larsmo further argues that this dangerous influence was absorbed into the mainstream bourgeoise milieu – he calls for an honest examination of this history by the Swedish right-wing movement, and an exhaustion of these corrosive influences once and for all.34 In 2007, Larsmo published the book Djävulssonaten (“The devil's sonata”) which further investigated the origins and consequences of the tennis hall meeting.

29 Ola Larsmo, “Heimdal Bör Göra Rent Hus,” Uppsala Nya Tidning, February 4, 2006. 30 Daniel Jansson, “Egen Rapport: Heimdal Inte Med Vid Bollhusmötet,” Uppsala Nya Tidning, May 5, 2006. 31 “Ordföranden Hoppas På Slut För Spekulationerna,” Uppsala Nya Tidning, May 5, 2006. 32 Ola Larsmo, “Bakom Stålvallen,” Dagens Nyheter, March 11, 2006. 33 Jan Myrdal, “Arvid Fredborg Hjälpte Borgerligheten Att Förstå,” Dagens Nyheter, March 28, 2006. 34 Ola Larsmo, “Här Behövs Utvädring!,” Dagens Nyheter, March 29, 2006.

10 Arvid Fredborg and his circle of friends were still in the spotlight, as the book argues that Fredborg was a consequential anti-Semite and fascist.35 Looking at the debate as a whole, it is clear that a lot of vague suppositions about terms such as Nazism, fascism, far-right and extreme right, as well as ideations about the contents of these labels, confuse the public discourse about the tennis hall meeting and its origins. First of all, the term Nazi is often used as a binary, as if individuals are either loyal to the specific German imperialist variant of national socialism or otherwise completely innocent of being antisemites or affiliated with fascism in any way. This was the case in the 2000-debate about the tennis hall meeting, where Fredborg and other participants of the meeting oscillated between “pure” Nazism and complete innocence. Different ideologies are presumed equal both in form and ethical gravity. Larsmo writes that the question is not if Fredborg was a Nazi or not, but rather “how much of a Nazi”, conceptualizing far-right ideology as if it were a singular sliding scale that finds its true, final and most extreme expression in Nazism. These false dichotomies and concepts, used by all participants in this debate, seem to have obscured the historical reality of the tennis hall meeting, as well as its nuances and particularities. The newspaper opinion piece format of course does not lend itself to the careful definition of terms, nor is the most theoretically correct text the most powerful and convincing one in the public discourse, so these “mistakes” are wholly understandable. Nevertheless, neither is it surprising that this format derails the discussion and, at best, nods to the truth rather than arriving there. Examining the tennis hall meeting in an academic, detached, and systematic way is therefore a worthwhile pursuit that can hopefully clear up some of the misunderstandings created by the debate and unearth the events and motivations behind Bollhusmötet. Because as this investigation will show, there is reason to believe Larsmo when he writes that modern-day liberals and conservatives who hold documents like The Swedish Line in high regard are probably not aware of what they say.

Research aim and questions

The lively debate about Bollhusmötet, along with the many misconceptions about the procedures of the meeting, as well as the misconceptions about the people involved and their motivations, suggest a knowledge-gap concerning both the origins of the meeting, the political driving forces behind it, and its connections to broader political milieus. This thesis aims to uncover the story behind the tennis hall meeting and offer historical insight into the ideological motives behind this controversial and influential event. The investigation has been conducted through the following research questions:

35 Larsmo, Djävulssonaten. Ur det svenska hatets historia., 113; Larsmo, 146.

11

• Who were the people behind the meeting? • What were their motives? • What was their overarching political vision?

Separating motive from political vision has to do with how ideologies are structured. For instance, antisemitism might be a short-term motive, removed from any grander political strategy – however, antisemitism might also be the larger, overarching ideological goal. Ideology contains both more and less important elements. While some relevant model ideologies and traditions of thought have been chosen as reference points, the theory of this study also holds that ideology, as manifested in individuals, can be fragmented, mixed up, and contradictory. The research questions are therefore relatively open- ended to allow for this ideological complexity, ambiguity, and fluidity. Clear-cut lines and dichotomies limit our understanding. It is not a question of “Was X or Y a Nazi”, but rather an investigation into the specific ideological nature of a person or organization, rooted in his/her/its historical context. It is of course necessary to use ideological concepts and labels to conduct such an investigation, but all the while being wary of their reductionist nature.

Material and method

In this chapter, the primary sources of the investigation are introduced and discussed – the tennis hall meeting archival material organized by Fredborg, Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939, and The Swedish Line. The most important secondary source, Destination: Berlin, is also properly introduced. In the second part of the chapter, the methodological approach for working through the material is described. It demonstrates how Paul Ricoeur’s method of hermeneutics operationalizes the research questions and how the investigative parts of the study are structured.

Material

When following the ideological breadcrumb trail behind the people who participated in the tennis hall meeting, almost all secondary sources refer to two documents – one document is the Heimdal's Yearly Review 1939, published when the Heimdal association was run by Fredborg’s friendship circle of nationalist intellectuals in 1939. The other document is Den Svenska linjen (“The Swedish Line”), a political pamphlet and program statement distributed by roughly the same group of nationalists in 1940, Fredborg among them. During the process of this study, it quickly became clear that these are not simply secondary sources or political expressions peripheral to Bollhusmötet – they are

12 intimately intertwined with the events of the tennis hall meeting. Not only were they produced by many of the same people who orchestrated the tennis hall meeting, but they also came out in relatively short succession afterward and display a clear ideological continuity that not only complements but completes our understanding of Bollhusmötet. Analyzing one without the other results in a flawed understanding of the meeting's motives, ideological elements, and long-term results. The tennis hall meeting cannot be fully understood without a combined analysis including the archival material about Bollhusmötet, Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939, and The Swedish Line. Until now, no such analysis has existed. This kind of investigation is not only important when it comes to settling the debate about Fredborg and his political allies, but also when it comes to shining a light on ideological elements that were absorbed into the mainstream right when they probably should have been shunned by conservatives and liberals alike. The fact that the material is written, gathered, and sorted by Fredborg himself is both a strength and a weakness. On one hand, the material offers a look into the world view of Fredborg in more ways than one, like the choices to include, exclude, obscure, neglect or give emphasis to certain subjects can be analyzed in themselves. On the other hand, we see what he wants us to see – perhaps he allows us to see the whole truth, perhaps not. Caution and reflexivity have been necessary when interpreting the material.

Fredborg’s archival material about Bollhusmötet

The entirety of the archive Arvid Fredborg: Efterlämnade papper (“Arvid Fredborg: Posthumous papers”) contains 70 shelf meters of material. It is located in Uppsala, Sweden, in the university library . Access to the material is restricted, and permission is only granted for research purposes. The contents include biographica, diaries, letters and drafts, manuscripts, notes, photographs, and press cuttings. Out of this vast array of material a capsule has been chosen as research material for this investigation, and for obvious reason. In the section of the archive titled “The private archive,” all capsuled are marked only by year, except one called “1939: The Student Union meeting (Bollhusmötet), the refugee question and Heimdal’s yearly review”. The material inside is prefaced by a short introductory note by Fredborg, stating that the contents of the capsule shall be left to Carolina Rediviva after his death, to be made accessible to researchers from October 8 of 2015 and onward, along with the rest of his deposited documents. The remaining contents of the capsule include an original copy of the resolution that won the vote at Bollhusmötet, the protocol from the Uppsala Student Union Directorate Meeting, a yellow note with a motion for an alternate resolution, Fredborg’s written down speech at the tennis hall meeting, 83 clippings of newspaper articles and opinion pieces, three copies of the Uppsala Student Union magazine Ergo that contain further articles and opinion pieces about the tennis hall meeting,

13 23 letters, three postcards, one telegram, a drawing of a map of that is used in Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939, a note concerning sold copies of Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939, a budgetary note concerning the economy of Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939, and a draft for an opinion piece.36 The material is structured in chronological order, beginning with the letters and articles concerning Bollhusmötet and ending with the material concerning Heimdals Yearly Review 1939. There is also another capsule called 1939, which contains the material from the same year that is not directly connected to Bollhusmötet. The choice to separate this material means something – this event stands out in Fredborgs life and recalling the congratulatory telegram mentioned in the introduction to this study, it is easy to get the impression that it stands out as an achievement. Also, the interconnectedness between the sources becomes apparent already in this title - the intimate connection between the event of the tennis hall meeting and Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939 is suggested by the choice to file these together, apart from the other documents of the thirties. There is a preliminary budget for the yearly review, complete with a description of the contents of all the articles. It is without date but filed sometime before March 17 as that is the date of the next document. As the tennis hall meeting took place on February 17, the texts for Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939 were most likely written during the same period when the Fredborg circle planned and coordinated Bollhusmötet.

Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939 and The Swedish Line

Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939 was published at the end of April and was an important political outlet for Fredborg and his circle - the ideological statements and proposed strategies formulated here was, according to Fredborg himself as well as his critics, an important development of the ideas that had driven him politically thus far. Looking at the archival material about Bollhusmötet, it is clear that the opinions in Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939 is a clear continuation of the reasoning behind the tennis hall meeting, a continuity that is addressed in detail during the analysis in the section “Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939 examined”. The review itself is 181 pages long and can be found in its original form in the Carolina Rediviva library in Uppsala. The Swedish Line is, just like Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939, often brought up in the modern-day debates, and the conservative student association Fria Moderata Studentförbundet, FMSF (“Confederation of Swedish Conservative and Liberal Students”), still publishes a journal named after this particular text. The ideas that motivated the tennis hall meeting and were first formulated systematically in Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939 take on their full form here. It was published in 1940

36 Arvid Fredborg, ed., “1939: Kårmötet (Bollhusmötet), Flyktingfrågan Och Heimdals Årsskrift,” 1939, Arvid Fredborg: Efterlämnade papper.

14 and is relatively short in comparison to the other documents – only 31 pages. It is available online through Project Runeberg.37 While often discussed, there has been little to no research about the ideological content of both these documents, so little in fact that Fredborg himself could embrace them as late as 1985 without receiving any backlash. Author Ola Larsmo comes closest to examining their contents in his book Djävulssonaten as well as in his opinion articles. He however focuses mostly on the tennis hall meeting, so The Swedish Line and Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939 often became peripheral. Yet, these texts deserve proper academic attention in themselves.

Destination: Berlin

The most important secondary source in this investigation is Fredborg’s autobiography Destination: Berlin from 1985. It provides a first-hand account of the genesis and development of the above- mentioned material and has arguably been the most important companion piece to these documents and events before the Fredborg-archive was made available for researchers. It offers a frame of interpretation of the 1939-1940 events of Bollhusmötet and the publication of Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939 and The Swedish Line, an interpretation that is often referred to in debates and discussions about Bollhusmötet. If taken at face value, it would offer answers to all three of the research questions and this investigation would not be necessary. It is therefore important to discuss its narrative in contrast to the source material, as this study aims to go beyond the answers provided by Destination: Berlin.

Method

This thesis employs a variant of Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of faith and suspicion as its primary methodological framework. This method is appropriate for the investigation since there is constant friction between the secondary and primary sources, leaving us to make sense of the dissonance. The media descriptions of the people and events at Bollhusmötet, today and the 1930’s and 1940’s, as well as Fredborg’s description of the events, often do not align easily with the historical documents, sometimes directly contradicting them. Not only is Ricoeur’s method a good way of dealing with such contradictions but it also turns this friction between different narratives into an interesting place from which to explore historical topics. The method, as characterized by clinical psychologist Ruthellen Josselson, is simple but powerful, and sidesteps the dichotomy of positivism/postmodernism in favour of a phenomenological approach. The method has its roots in religious phenomenology and exegesis

37 “Den Svenska Linjen,” Project Runeberg (Project Runeberg, 1940), http://runeberg.org/svlinjen/. Project Runeberg is a private online archive of Nordic and Scandinavian literature.

15 but has also been found useful in the social sciences and arts. The method distinguishes between two different forms of interpretation of the material – a “faithful” interpretation and a “suspicious” interpretation. The goal of the former is to restore the original meaning of the text as the author intended it, and the goal of the latter is to unveil meanings that the author has hidden from the reader, knowingly or unknowingly.38 Although Ricoeur refers to his method as one of doubt and faith, Ruthellen Josselson suggests that the terms demystification and restoration are more suitable because of the pejorative connotations that “doubt” and “suspicion” carry with them – perhaps one could also add that the word “faith” implies an esoteric or transcendental quality that becomes misplaced when attributed to the source material of an academic investigation. Therefore, the method will be referred to as the hermeneutics of demystification and restoration from now on.39 Employing hermeneutics of restoration means taking someone at their word and requires reasoning for why the reader should also align themselves with the intentions of the author.40 Choosing the hermeneutics of demystification means presenting an argument for why the author should not be taken at his or her word - the researcher must convince the reader why the chosen narrative does not make sense at face value, that there is more to the narrative presented by the sources than meets the eye.41 The argument for restoration/demystification must be a concrete one, not based on vague suspicion or sentiment. For example, it can be done by pointing out contradictions or inconsequential parts of the text.42 After this initial argument, both the restoration and demystification approaches go beyond mere description to produce an analysis of the text.43 It is not a question of “surface” versus “dept” level reading, as both restoration and demystification aim to uncover deeper meanings within the material. The question is rather how the researcher understands the text - is the text primarily an expression of an authentic experience that needs clarification or is the text primarily a construction that needs to be unpacked?44 Most texts can of course be both at the same time, and a combination of the methods, an alternation between restoration and demystification, is theoretically possible. However, such a double-edged approach can be ethically difficult and requires the researcher to be transparent about when the shifts occur.45 This investigation is based on the hermeneutics of demystification. The research aim and questions are formulated in a way that presupposes a deconstruction of the material and an argument is presented for why the source material is in conflict with itself, a conflict that requires an

38 Ruthellen Josselson, “The Hermeneutics of Faith and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion,” Narrative Inquiry, no. July 2004 (n.d.): 1. 39 Josselson, 4–5. 40 Josselson, 8. 41 Josselson, 18. 42 Josselson, 18. 43 Josselson, 10. 44 Josselson, 3–4; Josselson, 18. 45 Josselson, “The Hermeneutics of Faith and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion,” 20; Josselson, 22.

16 explanation. In the case of the tennis hall meeting, an inconsequential narrative arises when Fredborg’s later writings about the events of the 1930s and 1940s in his autobiography Destination: Berlin are compared to his own archival material about the tennis hall meeting, The Swedish Line and Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939. Together with the context provided by the theoretical framework and historical background, the analysis of the material will attempt to resolve and make sense of contradictions found between these texts. However, this approach to the material invites anyone willing to attempt an opposite, restoration-based reading of the documents, a reading that could result in different conclusions and important critiques of the analysis attempted here. A demystifying approach is not synonymous with antipathy toward the author of the source material – the condition of suspicion is one of opportunity, and according to Ricoeur's later works, it is even a necessary component of friendship. Choosing to critically examine an inconsequential narrative is not a hostile action per se.46 In practice, the method looks like this – after providing an introduction and some historical context, the contents of the material will be described and contextualized. For example, in the case of Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939, this section is called “Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939 examined”. Next, the contents of the text are read together with potential conflicting statements and narratives found in the secondary sources (Destination: Berlin), the historical background, and occasionally the arguments made in media debates. The contradictions are then discussed and analyzed together with the remaining historical background as well as theory, to arrive at a plausible interpretation based on demystification – what is being obfuscated and what actually happened? This section is then called “Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939 interpreted”. In the case of the subchapter “The tennis hall meeting”, the argumentation is so multifaceted that the interpretation part has been divided into two sections, “The race arguments interpreted” and “The job scarcity arguments interpreted”.

Theoretical perspectives

This chapter introduces the theoretical perspectives of the study. First, the theory of ideology employed in the analysis is described - Michael Freeden’s idea of morphological ideology. Then, the theory of language use is introduced, based on ideas formulated by Matthew Feldman, Paul Jackson, and Robert Griffin.

Ideology

Since this investigation deals with ideological configurations that are perhaps unusual or existing in the spaces between popular labels and conceptions, ideology is approached according to Michael

46 Alison Scott-Baumann, Ricoeur and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion, 1st ed. (Continuum International Publishing Group, 2009). p. 76

17 Freeden’s idea of morphological ideology. Even if ideologies are permanent ideal types of political thought, they are not necessarily rigid or synonymous with certain political parties. The boundaries between ideologies are unstable and ideologies may mutate diachronically, both on individual and collective levels. All too often ideologies are downgraded to “grand narratives” that simply fit individuals inside of them like a container, and the job of the researcher becomes that of pushing square pegs through square holes and round pegs through round holes. An overly generalized view of ideology risks neglecting the nuances of varieties that exist under the grander labels like “liberalism” or “conservatism”. Ideology is not either-or, not defined as a closed set of categories, but as free-flowing and multiple discursive competitions for control over the mainstream political language, and thus control of the political decisions that follow from that discourse. 47 Freeden argues that we should conceptualize political thought “as ideologies”, not “through ideologies”. Ideologies do not mask deeper truths - ideologies are themselves modes of political thinking.48 Personal or factional variants of the ideology are always highly probable through different interpretations of the core, adjacent and peripheral elements of the ideology.49 The core elements make up the long-term durability of an ideology, like “liberty” for liberalism – they hold it together. Adjacent elements are described as “internal mutations of the core”, not always present in every situation, but still important in “anchoring” the core. For liberalism, adjacent elements could be democracy or property. Peripheral elements are those most joined with current affairs and are as such the least stable and most sensitive to changes in the sociopolitical and economic landscape. Freeden uses examples like migration, terrorism, and climate change. Peripheral elements can move up the ladder and become adjacent (which might be the case with climate change in some instances), as can adjacent elements be downgraded to the periphery. Core concepts are not immune to change either, but such a change would signify a major instability in the ideology, and possibly its transformation into another ideology altogether.50 This is a non- essentialist view of ideology much inspired by Wittgenstein’s theory of meaning in language – ideologies can be grouped in “families” that are “a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing”. These families share most or all of the core concepts.51 A premise of this thesis is that this is also the case with far-right ideologies. The ideological spectrum does not consist of clear, delimited categories, but is rather a complicated patchwork. An obsession with simple dichotomies like Nazi/non-Nazi is not helpful. At the same time, ideologies often come “prepackaged” through organizations and parties, to borrow sociologist Theodor W. Adorno and philosopher Max Horkheimer’s term, and as political “customers” we sometimes buy

47 Michael Freeden, “The Morphological Analysis of Ideology,” in The Oxford Handbook of Political Ideologies (OUP Oxford, 2013), 115; Freeden, 117; Freeden, 129. 48 Freeden, “The Morphological Analysis of Ideology,” 118. 49 Freeden, 120–21. 50 Freeden, 124–26. 51 Freeden, 127.

18 the entire “package”, or “family” as Freeden would express it.52 The attraction to a certain ideological element might lead us to embrace the other adjacent and peripheral elements that it is institutionally intertwined with. Here, both Freeden and Adorno are correct at the same time – the political and ideological “packages” or “families” exist, such as the Nazi package, yet individuals relate to these “packages” in a complicated way. As ideologies are not seen as free-floating ideations existing onto themselves, but as political discourse in proximity to real-world events, the study of ideologies requires knowledge and historical context rather than general ethical prescriptions.53 This is why a rather extensive chapter of historical background will be provided later on to better our understanding of Arvid Fredborg’s political circle and its place in the political landscape.

Doublespeak

This study is in large part an analysis of language – therefore it is important to be aware not only of concepts found in language but of language use in a broader sense. Dealing with material that exists in the spaces between mainstream political discourse and fascism, what is allowed to be said has repercussions for how it is said. The revelations of the Nazi genocide at the end of World War II led to the extreme stigmatization of fascist and far-right ideology, making anti-fascism normative. Subsequent attempts to revive these ideological projects have all failed, at least on a popular level. During the recent decades, fewer and fewer far-right organizations self-identify as fascist, partly as a conscious choice to present differently, recognizing that they have to “repackage” their ideological content to reach success. New language and presentation are thus used to smuggle extreme right or fascist ideology into the liberal democratic political arena, the goal being to change its foundations from within. As historian of fascism Matthew Feldman and historian of the twentieth century Paul Jackson point out, many fascists and far-right politicians have been very vocal about this covert operation, more or less admitting a double agenda - one presented to the insiders and loyalists and another presented to the public. This has coincided with a general outward shift of focus from eugenics to more “cultural ”, often targeting Muslim or middle eastern groups rather than displaying antisemitic tendencies.54 However, early examples of self-conscious doublespeak have been pointed out already in the early 1940s by historian and political theorist Robert Griffin.55 In the context of this study, it is likely that the threat of political exclusion that faced Swedish fascists and national socialists all through the thirties, especially after the Nazis took

52 Max Horkheimer and Theodor W Adorno, Upplysningens Dialektik, Dialektik der Aufklärung, trans. Lars Bjurman and Carl-Henning Wijkmark, Third edition (1944; repr., Axlo: Daidalos, 2016), 224–26. 53 Freeden, “The Morphological Analysis of Ideology,” 117–18; Freeden, 134. 54 Paul Jackson and Matthew Feldman, eds., Doublespeak: The Rhetoric of the Far Right since 1945 (Ibidem Verlag, 2015), 7–14. 55 Roger Griffin, “‘Lingua Quarti Imperii’: The Euphemistic Tradition of the Extreme Right,” in Doublespeak: The Rhetoric of the Far Right since 1945 (Ibidem Verlag, 2015), 39–40.

19 power in Germany, would lead to some form of doublespeak in their milieu, and especially in milieus adjacent to the mainstream political arena. Of course, on some level, most political parties and movements use milder expressions and calculated language in their external communication - not to mention business language, which often avoids the more direct and abrasive aspects of economic reality (“downsizing, “structural readjustment”, etc). What makes far-right and fascist doublespeak stick out is the blatant intentionality of it, the often-demonstrated conscious renaming and rebranding of terms that have become offensive, the instrumentalization of language.56

Historical background

To contextualize the events and ideological expressions that are central to this study, it is important to understand the political climate that Fredborg and his circle acted in. This chapter provides the necessary historical context that the tennis hall meeting is nested in. First, a description of the general political landscape of Sweden in the 1930’s acts as an introduction, with special attention given to the general Swedish perception of as well as the refugee situation of 1938 and onward. Then, areas of Swedish political life relevant to are described in-depth, providing history and definitions of ideologies, as well as describing their concrete manifestations in Swedish political life during the early twentieth century. The inclusion of these specific milieus and ideologies are entirely motivated by their connections to the source material and the recent debates about the tennis hall meeting, and any magnetism or likeness between them is not implied by their inclusion alone unless explicitly stated. First, antisemitism is defined and given historical context, before discussing specific manifestations of antisemitism in Swedish society during the 1930s. Then the history of Swedish race biology is summarized. A subchapter is then dedicated to Fascism, Nazism, and the far right. Finally, an overview of the Swedish conservative movement is provided, along with a history of The National Youth League of Sweden which started as a conservative organization but gradually became Nazi affiliated.

Sweden’s political landscape 1933 – 1940

Looking back at the 1930s, there are a lot of concepts that have drifted into other connotations and realms of meaning since then. For example, around the time of World War II, the word “national” was widely popular and bore positive connotations – it was a broad conception of

56 Griffin, 56.

20 Swedishness that overarched all party lines and ideological conflicts.57 The political “middle” did not exist as a political concept during the 1930s like it does today, and alignment with political movements, therefore, had a different logic.58 It is also important to keep in mind that it was not possible to have a complete and truthful picture of Nazism and its deeds until the end of the war, even if many of its violent and abrasive aspects were visible early on, as discussed in the introduction. Germany was, at this time, the country that Sweden was most closely tied to culturally. The Swedish knowledge about German arts, language, and politics was unsurpassed in all areas except film, where the USA had more influence.59 Even events of lesser magnitude did not go unnoticed, and German cultural and political life was the subject of much debate during the interwar years and the second world war. became the Chancellor of Germany on January 30 of 1933. Still lacking a majority government, Hitler managed to enforce a dissolution of the Reichstag with a new election set for March 5. The run-up to the election was marked by coordinated Nazi terror so effective that the national socialists had practically seized power before the election date. This was a totalitarian takeover of German society with the abolition of all political parties except for the Nazis, dissolved unions, cultural cleansing and book burnings, the exclusion of Jews from all public service, and much more. The Nazi hostility to basic civil rights, its antisemitism, and its violence was apparent from the very beginning – especially to the citizens of a country that was more influenced by German culture than any other.60 The reaction from Swedish newspapers was all over the place, from condemnations to congratulations. Liberal debaters like publicist and historian Torgny Segerstedt and publications like Dagens Nyheter condemned Hitler as a populist and an anti-democrat while Social Democratic debaters like Fredrik Ström as well as left-wing publications like Clarté accused the Nazis of being a front for the landowning class. Formerly liberal Aftonbladet on the other hand praised the new regime as “fighting for the sake of humanity” and conservative Nya Dagligt Allehanda found it understandable that Hitler had thrown out the dubious democratic system – more than anything, they both praised German national socialism for being a defense against , an argument that united all supporters of Nazi Germany at this time.61 Fredrik Böök of Svenska Dagbladet condemned the race ideology and antisemitism of Nazi Germany (while being understanding of it), but defended everything else, even the book burnings, calling oppositional authors like Thomas Mann and Heinrich Heine traitors.62 This position shows, interestingly, that in the early days of the Nazi regime, some stood firmly behind the ideological fascism of Nazi Germany but disliked the

57 Lena Berggren, Nationell Upplysning: Drag i Den Svenska Antisemitismens Historia (Stockholm: Carlsson Bokförlag, 1999), 72. 58 Oredsson, Lunds universitet under andra världskriget: Motsättningar, debatter och hjälpinsatser, 16. 59 Oredsson, 36–37. 60 Oredsson, 20. 61 Oredsson, 20–21. 62 Oredsson, 22.

21 race ideology – the ideological “package” of Nazi sympathies in the Swedish public imagination was not yet entirely negotiated. In 1938, the number of refugees seeking to enter Sweden increased substantially, especially after Nazi Germany annexed Austria. Sweden’s government did not accept any refugee quotas, instead proposing that the problem of Jewish emigration should be solved by one or several colonization areas outside of Europe. Swedish negotiators demanded that German agencies made a clear distinction between Jewish and non-Jewish emigrants, resulting in the German policy that all Jews, from 1938 and forward, got a red J-stamp in their passports. A common argument for this policy was that the more Jews in Sweden would also naturally increase and intensify antisemitism.63 When the “Kristallnacht” occurred in November the same year the dire situation of Jewish refugees once again came into focus. Swedish agencies decided that entry permits for single refugees could be granted if famous people or judicious organizations recommended them.64 This is why the following debate with its tennis hall meeting was decisive – the Swedish government had essentially outsourced the criteria for entry permits to civil society. As stated in the introduction, refugee activists and non-profit associations were the first to start mobilizing. A variety of Social democratic, communist, Christian, Jewish as well as other organizations and beneficiaries were organizing different forms of aid. Medicinalstyrelsen (“The Medicinal Board”), the Swedish state authority responsible for the healthcare system, put forward a proposal that about ten Jewish doctors from Germany should be given a residence permit and right to practice their professions.65 The first serious countermove then came from six trade organizations in February 1939, connected to textile laborers, clerks, and small business owners. Together, they sent a resolution to the king where they urged for the greatest possible restrictions when it came to “the influx of foreign subjects”, and especially Jews, for fear of work scarcity and the racial corruption of the Nordic folk tribe. Newspapers wrote about a coming “refugee invasion”. Out of the 1 748 residence applications from refugees after the “Kristallnacht”, 839 were turned down.66

Antisemitism

Since antisemitism is at the heart of the controversy of the tennis hall meeting and its following debate, this subchapter will provide an understanding of antisemitism and the antisemitic tradition. The term antisemitism, an etymology that is questionable because there is no real “Semitism” to counter, came into general use somewhere around the end of the nineteenth century and referred

63 Oredsson, 59; Berggren, Nationell Upplysning: Drag i Den Svenska Antisemitismens Historia, 79. 64 Berggren, Nationell Upplysning: Drag i Den Svenska Antisemitismens Historia, 59. 65 Berggren, 80. 66 Oredsson, Lunds universitet under andra världskriget: Motsättningar, debatter och hjälpinsatser, 61; Berggren, Nationell Upplysning: Drag i Den Svenska Antisemitismens Historia, 81.

22 to a continuous resentment of Jews ranging back for over two millennia.67 In this thesis, antisemitism is defined according to sociologist Helen Fein.

“I propose to define antisemitism as a persisting latent structure of hostile beliefs toward Jews as a collectivity manifested in individuals as attitudes, and in culture as myth, ideology, folklore, and imagery, and in actions - social or legal , political mobilization against the Jews, and collective or state violence - which results in and/or is designed to distance, displace, or destroy Jews as Jews. (Herein, it is assumed that Jews are people who are socially labeled as Jews as well as people who identify themselves as Jews, regardless of the basis of ascription.)”68

Fein’s definition may be lengthy, but intellectual historian and researcher of antisemitism Lena Berggren argues in her book Nationell Upplysning (“National Enlightenment”), it is well formulated because it includes theory, practice, ideas, and behaviors, while many other definitions tend to be reduced to one or the other of those four. However, as Berggren also states, antisemitism cannot be summed up in just a few sentences, and as Freeden’s idea of ideological morphology posits, we also need to examine the historically specific context and origin of the ideology in question.69 Antisemitism is not something singular or monolithic, but takes on different expressions in different milieus, just like Freedens theory of ideology points out. As Berggren writes, modern antisemitism paradoxically has nothing to do with Jews or how they relate to their surroundings, if they assimilate or not – the answer to the “why” of antisemitism is to be found with the antisemites themselves, in their worldview and ideology. Only when we ask what the Jew represents for the antisemite can we understand antisemitism.70 Antisemitism is not strictly textual. According to Berggren, it is necessary to interpret the intertextual message as antisemites often presume Jews use code language and then mirror that presumption by using it themselves – a style that is especially prevalent in texts regarding a global Jewish conspiracy. Building on her definition of antisemitism, Fein details five antisemitic Jewish archetypes that are useful when identifying and discussing different variants of antisemitism. Even though more archetypes could probably be added indefinitely, these are the most common.

• The Jew as a betrayer and a manipulator (the Judas image)

• The Jew as an exploiter personifying usury or modern capitalism (the Shylock image)

• The Jew as a skeptic, an iconoclast, a revolutionary, undermining faith and authority (the Red Jew)

67 Berggren, Nationell Upplysning: Drag i Den Svenska Antisemitismens Historia, 30. 68 Helen Fein, “Dimensions of Antisemitism: Attitudes, Collective Accusations, and Actions,” in The Persisting Question: Sociological Perspectives and Social Contexts of Modern Antisemitism (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co, 1987), 77. 69 Berggren, Nationell Upplysning: Drag i Den Svenska Antisemitismens Historia, 47. 70 Berggren, 97–98.

23 • The Jew as non-human or a diabolic-murderer, poisoner, polluter (the demonologic image)

• The male Jew as a sexual aggressor and pornographer and the Jewish woman as a seducer (the lecherous Jew)71

Antisemitism and modernity

As the antisemitic conception of the Fredborg group sometimes has deep historical roots, this section will provide a general history of European antisemitism as it emerged during the advent of modernity. Jews have a long history of being unpopular among, but tolerated by, all social classes in western society, and this antipathy followed Jewish people into the modern world. Sociologist of modernity Zygmunt Bauman calls this property of being disliked from every conceivable ideological direction “prismatic” – the Jews are a prismatic group because whichever side a prism is looked at from, it appears different. Wherever you stood, Jews appeared as being on the opposite side.72 The Jewish people, lacking both social class and nation, stood outside the central political conflicts of the twentieth century and appeared as a negation of all social categories and conceptions.73 This is paradoxically also a reason why antisemitism was, and is, so potent – antisemitism fits into everything so well because it is, in reality, not connected with anything. This historically concrete detachment gives antisemitism the peculiar property of transcending the left- right spectrum. In the eyes of race ideologues, the Jews were a “non-race”, a dangerous ambiguity that reprised their role as a dangerous theological ambiguity before modernity. The Jews went from being a religious problem to a worldly one, from subjects of God's justice to a merely human problem, from hell and purgatory to the ovens of the extermination camps.74 The “irrational” antisemitic hatred of previous eras did not disappear with the rationality of the enlightenment and civil rights – instead, it became reworked into “rational” antipathy against the Jewish people.75 When religious and judicial distinctions were exhausted as ways to create barriers between Jews and others, Judaism was secularized into Jewishness, and the idea of a race rather than a religious category became more prevalent.76 Ironically, modern antisemitism was born as a result of the emancipation of Jews. The enlightenment rationality carried the irrationality of former periods in its arms.77

71 Fein, “Dimensions of Antisemitism: Attitudes, Collective Accusations, and Actions,” 72. 72 Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989), 42–43. 73 Bauman, 43; Bauman, 68. 74 Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 41; Bauman, 72. 75 Horkheimer and W Adorno, Upplysningens Dialektik, 203. 76 Hannah Arendt, Totalitarismens ursprung (1948; repr., Axlo: Bokförlaget Daidalos AB, 2018), 127; Berggren, Nationell Upplysning: Drag i Den Svenska Antisemitismens Historia, 33; Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 58–59. 77 Horkheimer and W Adorno, Upplysningens Dialektik, 23.

24 There are paths and potential connections to antisemitism from all modernist ideologies. It is all too easy to see liberalism, socialism, or any other ideology of choice at “the opposite end” of a spectrum where antisemitism is the other extreme. Antisemitism is not simply a result of an overload of conservatism or nationalism - quite the contrary, antisemitism grew stronger in a time where nationalism was structurally weakened, in the period following the first world war. And even before then, the earliest antisemitic parties were the first to band together internationally. The connection between antisemitism and nationalism is not naturally given. Political scientist, historian, and specialist of nationalism Benedict Andersson is correct when he argues that racism and antisemitism do not originate from ideas of nationhood, but from ideas of class – it is essentially the secularized divide between the aristocracy and commoners. The divine claim of divinity among the nobility caused them to only “breed” among each other, protecting their “blue blood” from the common folk.78 This feudal class hierarchy of former economic systems was traded over to idealist race theory, later becoming encapsulated in race biology. Strangely, the early anti-modernist race ideologues were not against popular emancipation, they just have a different conception of it, based on race rather than civil rights.

Antisemitism in Sweden

Since ideologies are impossible to separate from their immediate political and social surroundings, it is important to take a look at how antisemitism has manifested in Sweden. While German influence on Swedish antisemitism is substantial, Swedish antisemitism still has its own history and identity, which this section will detail.79 Race mysticism was one of them - it was a cultural nationalist perception of the world with roots in German romanticism. Race mysticism conceptualized antisemitism as an important primordial power that had its place in the essence of Aryan culture, transcending all party politics or ideology.80 Professor Bengt Lidforss (1868 - 1913) introduced elements of Darwinist-inspired race biology into the race mysticist movement – he argued that just like people had different biology, so did they have different folk souls, viewing the two aspects of humanity, spiritual and biological, as complementary.81 Because of the ambiguity inherent in race mysticism, being a movement that was aggressively critical of tradition while also claiming to restore it, the movement could attract and harbor both reactionaries and progressives. Race mysticism found its perhaps most profound expression in Manhem, a Swedish Geatish society that believed the Swedish blood and folk soul was the spiritual predecessor to Christ.82

78 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, 4th ed. (1983; repr., London: Verso, 2016), 148–50. 79 Berggren, Nationell Upplysning: Drag i Den Svenska Antisemitismens Historia, 10; Berggren, 17–18. 80 Berggren, Nationell Upplysning: Drag i Den Svenska Antisemitismens Historia, 40–41. 81 Berggren, 89–100. 82 Berggren, 249, 263–65.

25 Gymnast and writer Carl Ernfrid Carlberg (1889-1962), the man behind Manhem and several other antisemitic publications and projects, later came to see Hitler's work as the true fulfillment of the French revolution. Manhem emphasized “free, contemporary historical research and popular enlightenment”, because they believed that science had hereto been hindered by morals and superstitions of the past. Research guided by enlightenment ideals would inevitably lead to the truth, and the free sciences would confirm the race mysticist core ideas through race biology.83 As we shall see later, Manhems race mysticism is an influence on parts of the Fredborg circle’s production, in particular, Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939 (see the section “Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939 examined.”) The notion of a Jewish world conspiracy has also been common in the Swedish antisemitic tradition. The thesis was pushed hard by editor August Skarin, who started several short-lived organizations in the early nineteenth century and had many followers and successors. He insisted that socialism, in his view a cosmopolitan, anti-religious, and socially corrosive movement, had ties to a Jewish conspiracy since Jews shared those same traits. However, socialism itself was just a smokescreen used to divert attention away from Jewish big business – both capitalism and socialism, then, were controlled by the Jews in Skarin's conception of the world.84 References to some kind of Jew-affiliated conspiracy, or a socialist plot to allow Jews into Sweden, is found throughout the Fredborg circle’s work, most prominently in the tennis hall meeting speeches (see the section “The race arguments interpreted” in the subchapter “The tennis hall meeting”). During the 1920s, Swedish antisemitism was characterized by a flora of organizations that were founded and closed down, the most successful one being the Swedish Antisemitic Association. The agendas of these organizations had a lot in common with international antisemitism at the time – the idea of a global Jewish conspiracy and fear of a Jewish world order, a program inspired by The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a reactionary and antimodernist attitude expressed through an antisemitic lens, as well as the idea that Jews were to blame for socialism.85 The Swedish agrarian movement stands out as a vessel of antisemitism. Why is it that the solutions proposed by the Race Biology Institute under Herman Lundborg were near identical to those found in their programs and propositions in the 1920s?86 The movement was not inherently antisemitic, however, the alleged connections between Jews and phenomena that were opposed to early agrarianism, especially urbanization or internationalism, made them appear as a manifestation of a political opponent that was otherwise abstract or difficult to explain.87 Antisemitism was an adjacent concept, in Freeden’s words. The conflict between cities and rural areas was central and it

83 Berggren, 228–30. 84 Berggren, 90–91. 85 Berggren, 94. 86 Berggren, 66. 87 Berggren, 107–8.

26 was often expressed in antisemitic terms, as urban areas were portrayed as the sites of racial degeneration while racial purity and vitality persisted in the countryside.88

Propagandistic vs. peripheral antisemitism

Looking back on the early-to-mid twentieth century, the problem of changing perceptions of race presents itself. Simply comparing twenty-first-century political norms and values to the 1930s and ascertaining that “everyone was antisemitic” is a recipe for failure and an example of what Freeden criticizes – a primitive reduction of history into a simple binary that obscures the actual events. Meaningful distinctions must have existed, otherwise, the tennis hall meeting would not have been contested ground at all. Almost nobody would contest the claim that humanity was made up of different races at the turn of the twentieth century and that these races had different essential properties with different values.89 However, even though race ideology and antisemitism were widespread, a difference can be observed between privately held ideas and what Berggren calls propagandistic antisemitism. As Torstendahl writes, the main part of the Swedish conservative and right-wing milieu never denied race ideology, but they usually did not propagate it either. The conservative party Allmänna Valmannaförbundet, AVF, (The National Electoral League) even criticized the antisemitism of Nazi Germany for being over the top and a substitute for more pressing issues. The party leader of the AVF, Arvid Lindman, rejected The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as false and stated that there was no reason to condemn any one folk/people – while still admitting the existence of a “Jewish problem” in Germany.90 The ideological contents of Lindman's antisemitism may be no different from that of a propagandist, but to use Freedens terms, some antisemitism may be peripheral while other antisemitism is a core or adjacent part of someone’s ideology. Propagandistic antisemitism, then, differs from this “passive” antisemitism by intensity and mode of expression, rather than content – propagandistic antisemitism is recognized by clear, deliberate, and substantial antisemitic argumentation, worded in a propagandistic fashion. It aims to convince and convert the listener, appealing to both reason and emotion.91 During the 1930s, propagandistic antisemitism was foremost represented by the nationalistic organizations and their newspapers and journals. Peripheral antisemitism was also prevalent in society of course, not least through cartoons and movies, but also in trade and industry, and within the Swedish state and government agencies.92

88 Berggren, 104; Rolf Torstendahl, Mellan nykonservatism och liberalism (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksells, 1969), 23–24. 89 Berggren, Nationell Upplysning: Drag i Den Svenska Antisemitismens Historia, 57–58. 90 Torstendahl, Mellan nykonservatism och liberalism, 47–48. 91 Berggren, Nationell Upplysning: Drag i Den Svenska Antisemitismens Historia, 9. 92 Berggren, 80.

27 Race biology and eugenics

Elements of race biology turn up many times in the source material, especially in Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939 and The Swedish Line. This subchapter will therefore provide historical context regarding Swedish race biology. Around the turn of the twentieth century, interest in race biology as a science was increasing rapidly. Race biology was understood as the scientific study of human races and their properties.93 It grew out of Darwinism and biological determinism, and the allure of the attached promise of groundbreaking social engineering – all societal problems could now be addressed at the very root, via human biology. This new research field consolidated around Europe and in the USA in the time shortly before World War I.94 After New Year’s Eve 1922, the Uppsala State Institute for Racial Biology was officially opened.95 It was led by biologist Herman Lundborg (1869-1943) and founded on the initiative of Social Democrats and Farmer’s League members.96 Throughout the 1920s, the institute engaged enthusiastically in civic education outside the academy, through joint projects or lectures held by Lundborg – for example, The Swedish Red Cross used material developed by the institute. Lundborg’s books were used in schools together with exercises where schoolchildren could try out different body measurements and categorize the results, informative movies were produced and scientific exhibitions displaying differences between “race types” were open to the public.97 However, a change came to pass when many journalists, politicians, and scientists distanced themselves from the most overt expressions of race ideology when the Nazis took power in Germany (although few renounced it completely.)98 This also resulted in the state budget for the institute being cut down severely in 1933.99 The workplace atmosphere became more and more antisemitic and paranoid, and Lundborg himself was claiming that “Jewish moles” were undermining his work as he drifted ideologically towards national socialism.100 After many internal conflicts and reorganizations, the institute slowly started to gear its focus towards hereditary research, detaching itself from the racial aspect of genetics.101 As time went on, institutional race biology and eugenics transformed into human genetics and medical genetics.102 This shift of focus was institutionalized in 1936 when the new head of the institute Gunnar Dahlberg officially took office.103

93 Berggren, 59. 94 Berggren, 60–61. 95 Gunnar Broberg, Statlig Rasforskning: En Historik Över Rasbiologiska Institutet (Lund: Lunds Studies in the History of Science and Ideas, 1995), 11. 96 Oredsson, Lunds universitet under andra världskriget: Motsättningar, debatter och hjälpinsatser, 42. 97 Broberg, Statlig Rasforskning: En Historik Över Rasbiologiska Institutet, 48–49. 98 Berggren, Nationell Upplysning: Drag i Den Svenska Antisemitismens Historia, 58; Berggren, 62–65. 99 Broberg, Statlig Rasforskning: En Historik Över Rasbiologiska Institutet, 53. 100 Broberg, 56–59. 101 Broberg, 85–86. 102 Broberg, 7–8. 103 Broberg, 69.

28 Lundborg claimed that individual traits, as well as a collective culture, emanates from a racial essence – strength and vitality were equated with purity. The idea of racial degeneration emerged as a paranoid mirror image of progressivism – if society progressed too fast there was the risk of racial contamination, a fear that was common around this time.104 According to historian of ideas Hertha Hanson, race biology becomes impossible to understand if we ignore its idealist core since it remains grounded in idealist and national romantic ideas. Race biology generally used thoroughly racist stereotypes as its starting point and then sought to confirm these empirically. The intentions behind race biology were not to replace an outdated idealism, but to act as a complement.105 Still, race biology opened up a whole new set of practices where humans were, for all intents and purposes of the research, reduced to matter or quantified into statistics.106 This allowed, in the words of Bauman, moral responsibility to be replaced by a technical responsibility, which justified radical treatment of the human genetic material and the humans who harbor it107 Race biology answered the question of nature versus nurture by seeking to empirically prove the former.108 The new discipline was quick to tie in with both modernist and reactionary thought. It should not be seen as a coherent ideology, but rather as an approach or a technique. It emphasizes a view of humans as cogs in machinery, as components of varying quality, as material – it is tied to conflicts between the individual will and what is best for the race, a tension that is very apparent in the material of this study.109 The practical application of race biology was called eugenics, a term coined by Francis Galton, and was an international phenomenon closely tied to the modernization of society and an increasingly scientific mindset regarding all areas of society. Eugenics is usually divided into two categories, positive eugenics, and negative eugenics – positive eugenics seeks to protect and strengthen desirable genetic material while negative eugenics seeks to limit or reduce the undesirable genetic material.110 In Sweden, as the race discourse became less and less prevalent in the early nineteenth century, a non-racist version of eugenics started to be practiced in the 1930s, dubbed “reform eugenics”. It was first embraced by liberals and then taken over by socialist movements. The discourse around what had been race hygiene was now reformulated into a class issue.111 Its most famous implementation is probably the policy projects related to the so-called “population question” when declining birth rates in Sweden in the 1930s led to concern about workforce reproduction. Famous intellectual couple Alva and wrote the influential Kris i befolkningsfrågan (“Population Question Crisis”), possibly one of the most influential political

104 Berggren, Nationell Upplysning: Drag i Den Svenska Antisemitismens Historia, 58; Berggren, 62–65. 105 Berggren, Nationell Upplysning: Drag i Den Svenska Antisemitismens Historia, 60–62. 106 Berggren, 61. 107 Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 98. 108 Oredsson, Lunds universitet under andra världskriget: Motsättningar, debatter och hjälpinsatser, 42. 109 Berggren, Nationell Upplysning: Drag i Den Svenska Antisemitismens Historia, 67. 110 Broberg, Statlig Rasforskning: En Historik Över Rasbiologiska Institutet, 7–8. 111 Berggren, Nationell Upplysning: Drag i Den Svenska Antisemitismens Historia, 68.

29 texts in Swedish political history, that inspired a series of family-centered policy decisions that can be categorized as a form of positive eugenics.112 Negative eugenics also followed, with the sterilization projects that took place from the 1920s and onward. Fredborg makes explicit reference to Population Question Crisis in Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939, and The Swedish Line also discusses it at length, attempting to use its conclusions for the purpose of race eugenics (See the chapter “The Fredborg circle examined”).

Fascism, Nazism, and the far-right

This subchapter provides definitions and gives historical context to fascism, Nazism/national socialism, and “the far-right”, as well as their political expressions in Sweden during the early twentieth century. These ideologies and concepts appear both in the recent debates and in the 1939 discourse around Bollhusmötet. The question of German loyalty within these milieus is also addressed, as this aspect of fascist and far-right sympathies is often misunderstood.

Fascism

The first strain of fascism grew out of the Italian syndicalist movement in the early twentieth century but soon became violently opposed to socialist and bourgeois movements alike. Similar movements outside of Italy soon sprung up all over Europe.113 There are many different definitions and characterizations of fascism, and many researchers argue that fascism cannot be defined in the same way as other ideologies, that it is not primarily an outspoken set of doctrines but rather a practice and form of organization.114 However, this investigation relies on historian Stanley G. Payne’s typology of fascism which includes ideological goals, negations, and organizational styles. Payne’s theory is relevant to the hermeneutic approach of this thesis (detailed in the “Method”-chapter) as it is neither overly formulaic nor vague. The typology should not be seen as a complete checklist or closed definition of fascism, but rather as a helpful description of how fascism can look in practice. According to him, the identity and goals of fascism involve:

• An espousal of an idealist, vitalist, or voluntaristic philosophy, attempting to realize a modern, secular self-determined culture.

112 Per Wisselgren, “Reforming the Science-Policy Boundary: The Myrdals and the Swedish Tradition of Governmental Commissions,” in Academics as Public Intellectuals (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008), 183. 113 Robert O. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism (London: Penguin Books, 2004), 4–7; Berggren, Nationell Upplysning: Drag i Den Svenska Antisemitismens Historia, 48. 114 Berggren, Nationell Upplysning: Drag i Den Svenska Antisemitismens Historia, 49; Berggren, 53.

30 • Creating a new authoritarian nationalist state without basing it on traditional principles or conceptions. • An integrated national economic structure that is highly regulated, institutionally incorporating multiple social classes. Whether it is called national syndicalist, national socialist, or national corporatist is of less importance. • A willingness to use, or at least a positivity towards, violence and war. • A radical change in the nation’s relationship to other powers, expansion or empire

The negations of fascism are:

• Anti-liberalism • Anti-communism • Anti-conservatism

Fascist style and organization involve:

• Attempted mass mobilization with the militarization of political relationships and aesthetics, aiming for a mass party militia. • An aesthetic dimension to all political activity and an appeal to the emotional and mystical. • Strong emphasis on male domination and masculinity that influences an organic view of society. • An elevation of youth over other life phases, framing political issues as generational conflicts, at least during the initial transformation of society into fascism. • A tendency toward a charismatic, personal, authoritarian leadership style, regardless of if the commander is elected to some extent or not.115

Payne also distinguishes between historically concrete variants of the generic model fascism elaborated on above - Italian fascism, German national socialism, Spanish Falange fascism, the Romanian Iron Guard, and the Hungarian Arrow Cross movement.116 Although different versions of fascism have often (yet not always) exhibited anti-capitalist traits, it would be reductionist to equate fascism with socialism or social democracy. It is also important to emphasize the fault lines between fascism and conservatism. The revolutionary elements that

115 Berggren, Nationell Upplysning: Drag i Den Svenska Antisemitismens Historia, 53–54. 116 Berggren, 54.

31 fascism carries with makes it essentially anti-conservative, and it has historically caused conflict with conservatives who perceived fascist micropolitics as a grave intrusion on family life, religious community, and property rights. However, some ideological magnetism is still observable - the fascist contempt for bourgeois individualism has resulted in a tendency for fascists to ally themselves with nationally minded conservatives, despite their ideological disagreements.117 Sociologist Michael Mann explains this alliance by placing fascism under the umbrella term “nation- statism” – that is, ideologies that conceptualize politics and society through nation rather than class, which gives conservatives and fascist common ground in some areas. However, this still does not make fascism inherently right or left-wing, but rather a sort of third way between traditional left and traditional right-wing politics.118 Speaking of revolution and tradition, notable friction exists within fascism between its traditionalist ethos and high modernist ambitions.119 Berggren writes that fascism is not traditionalist – it aims to radically remodel society to create a new kind of human being, employing both reactionary and modernist traits as tools for this purpose.120 Jeffrey Herf, historian of twentieth-century Germany, has a similar theory. He characterizes fascism, and national socialism in particular, as a paradoxical combination of the rejection of enlightenment values and a technological romanticism that could only be born out of the enlightenment.121 Sweden’s first and only fascist organization was Sveriges fascistiska folkparti (“Sweden’s Fascist Peoples Party”), founded in 1924. Starting with Mussolini’s fascist Italy as their political ideal, they were, like most “purely” fascist organizations in Sweden, soon absorbed into the Nazi movement.122 It is likely that Sweden’s cultural proximity to Germany, as well as the ideological magnetism between Swedish fascism and the much larger national socialist sphere, made it hard for other brands of fascism to maintain their separate political identity during the interwar years and World War II.

Nazism

As the recent debate about the tennis hall meeting shows, careless use of the term Nazism is not uncommon. It is therefore important to understand Nazism correctly and apply the term consistently. The relationship between the concepts fascism and Nazism also needs to be made clear, as they are often used interchangeably as if they were synonymous.

117 Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism, 9–12. 118 Berggren, Nationell Upplysning: Drag i Den Svenska Antisemitismens Historia, 51–52. 119 Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism, 11–15. 120 Berggren, Nationell Upplysning: Drag i Den Svenska Antisemitismens Historia, 51. 121 Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture, and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 1–2. 122 Berggren, Nationell Upplysning: Drag i Den Svenska Antisemitismens Historia, 76–78.

32 Nazism, as the ideology is mostly called in the recent debate about the tennis hall meeting, is the same thing as German national socialism. It is one of the five variants of fascism that makes up the fascist family according to Payne.123 National socialism is fascism, but not all fascism is national socialism. What makes Nazism stand out from the generic model of fascism is the centrality of race ideology. While other fascist projects might have paid attention to race and eugenics, it was fundamental to the Nazi's whole worldview. Italian fascism, for example, based its community on idealistic conceptions about historic continuity and unity, while German national socialism was communal only through race and culture. According to Berggren, the Nazi race ideology flowed from a hierarchical division of humanity into different races, where the Aryan race is most valuable, and the Jewish race is least valuable.124 However, this race ideology transcended race - an aggressive internal cleansing of the genetic material by way of both positive and negative eugenics also affected handicapped, homosexuals, and those considered politically unsound, both in occupied countries and Germany. The idea of natural selection extended also to “their own” race, with elements that needed to be uprooted. The Nazi race conception was made up of both idealistic and biological notions, which also justified the extermination of political opponents, even if they were of “biologically” Aryan descent – they were perceived as “Jews in spirit” and lost their claim to Aryanism. The survival of the race trumped any claims to individuality and was always seen as the most crucial factor in any situation.125 Swedish Nazis acted as if antisemitism was a political religion to be preached, attributing near eschatological significance to the struggle against Jewishness.126 Svenska Nationalsocialistiska Frihetsförbundet (“The Swedish National Socialist Freedom Union”), Sweden’s first Nazi party, was founded in 1924. In the following years, national socialist organizations formed and splintered – the movement was very schismatic and multiplied quickly from a few to countless parties and groups of varying size and importance. One of the most notable splits was between Svenska nationalsocialistiska partiet (“The Swedish National Socialist Party”), Nationalsocialistiska arbetarepartiet, NSAP, (“the National Socialist Workers Party”) and a third group, Nationalsocialistiska blocket (“The National Socialist Block”), an upper-class nationalist socialist party that branched off about a year later. This fracturing occurred because of the many tensions inherent in the national socialist movement at the time, tensions between traditionalism and socialism, between fascist tendencies and national socialist tendencies, and between Swedish independence and loyalty to Germany.127 In 1936 the movement more or less consolidated into one party again through NSAP, and was later renamed Svensk socialistisk samling, SSS, (“Swedish

123 Berggren, 53–54. 124 Berggren, 55–56. 125 Berggren, 55–56. 126 Berggren, 82. 127 Heléne Lööw, Nazismen i Sverige 1924-1979 (Stockholm: Ordfront förlag, 2004), 13–18.

33 Socialist Gathering”).128 NSAP/SSS were similar to their German counterpart, with the exception that their antisemitism was not as grave, relatively speaking. Though more intensely formulated, the NSAP/SSS was leaning on a Swedish tradition of antisemitism that did not differ from other antisemitic currents in Swedish political life, antisemitism similar to that of the Farmer’s League for example. The NSAP/SSS also had a different view of women compared to German Nazis, allowing female participation in their party and political life at large. It was not, at least not initially, a question of a foreign transfer of opinions from Germany to the Swedish Nazis, but rather an ideological concordance.129 This is also why loyalty to German national socialism was a constant and controversial question even among Swedish national socialists, something that will be discussed in detail in the later section “The question of loyalty to Germany”. The path to national socialism is often characterized as going exclusively through conservatism or nationalism, but this is not true. An example of the interconnectedness between traditional socialism and national socialism is Sweden’s Socialist Party, SSP (Sveriges Socialistiska Parti). Founded as a left-wing project in 1934, the SSP had developed fully into a national socialist party by 1941.130 National socialism was also, despite its hatred for liberal ideas, similar to liberalism – it suggested an alternate modernity that was future-oriented and believed it to be an unstoppable force. It wanted to tear out the roots of tradition.131

Far/Extreme Right

“The far-right” is a concept popularly used as a catch-all term to group together all forms of political activity perceived to be “to the right” of the mainstream right-wing. However, in the context of the 1930s, many researchers use a different definition that this thesis will also employ. The far or extreme right is, according to Payne, a political block in their own right that acts as an intermediary link between conservatism and fascism. They may advocate for an authoritarian government along the lines of monarchy or Catholic neo- but are not willing to embrace newer forms of dictatorship. Basing their ideology on a rationalization of religious values, they reject the secularist vitalism and idealism often prevalent in fascism. While fascists were not traditionalists, the far-right was - they were concerned with the preservation of traditional elites and did not care for mass politics or populism. They also attributed much importance to the army and could accept praetorian rule. This made them alien to fascist ideas about mass party militarization and militias.132 Historian Rolf Torstendahl has a similar conception of “extreme conservatism”, a reactionary political type that was reactionary in the face of emerging liberal forms

128 Berggren, Nationell Upplysning: Drag i Den Svenska Antisemitismens Historia, 74–76. 129 Berggren, 79–80. 130 Berggren, 78. 131 Oredsson, Lunds universitet under andra världskriget: Motsättningar, debatter och hjälpinsatser, 88–89. 132 Berggren, Nationell Upplysning: Drag i Den Svenska Antisemitismens Historia, 52–53.

34 of right-wing ideology. They wanted a return to former societal institutions. In Sweden, this strand of reactionary conservatism manifested as so-called New Conservatism that wanted to compete with the radical left by combining right-wing social politics with military expansionism and social radicalism (see the section “The National Youth League”).133

The National Movement

During the interwar period, a self-defined “National movement” existed in Sweden, which acted as an umbrella for several central and peripheral organizations associated with Nazism, fascism, the extreme right, and propagandistic antisemitism. Three central organizations were the already mentioned Manhem society and the Swedish Antisemitic Association, as well as the National Association Sweden-Germany. The Manhem society, in its turn, acted as a liaison center for the Swedish national movement, because it had active members in almost all far-right and national socialist organizations in Sweden.134 Generally, the platform was strongly nationalistic, rife with anti-parliamentary and anti-democratic conceptions, an elitist view of society and politics, a sharp critique of contemporary society, political and cultural anti-modernism, a thorough strand of race ideology and antisemitism. There was also, at least initially, a strong sympathy for Germany, and a wish for the Nazis to win the war.135 Still, this flora of movements cannot be said to be synonymous with Nazism as they most often did not meet even the minimum requirements for fascist ideology.

The question of loyalty to Germany

One of the most common misconceptions in the debate about Bollhusmötet, and perhaps a common misconception about national socialism in general, is that Nazism was always pro- German. This was not the case. Loyalty to the German imperialist project emerges as an element independent of the other ideological contents of Nazism. Some of the de facto policies of Nazi Germany, especially the harsh treatment of Jews, acted as a dividing factor even among those antisemites who supported its ideological basis and were otherwise aligned with national socialism. This divide is often forgotten in the current debate, as are the political positions that were national socialist or otherwise fascist yet still rejected the real politics of Nazi Germany. For example, a controversy surrounding the violence of the “Kristallnacht” led to a severe split in the pro-Nazi organization Riksföreningen Sverige–Tyskland (“The National Association Sweden-Germany”), spawning much intrigue and personal conflict.136

133 Torstendahl, Mellan nykonservatism och liberalism, 11–13. 134 Berggren, Nationell Upplysning: Drag i Den Svenska Antisemitismens Historia, 211. 135 Berggren, 72–73. 136 Oredsson, Lunds universitet under andra världskriget: Motsättningar, debatter och hjälpinsatser, 48–50.

35 General in-fighting about allegiance to Germany and the NDSAP was not uncommon in Swedish Nazi-affiliated milieus. It was especially prevalent in NSAP/SSS in the late 1930s when the party adopted new guidelines, attempting to become independent of Germany.137 This ambivalence toward Germany, both rooted in ideological convictions and different forms of opportunism, led national socialists to accuse other national socialists of being bought by the Germans, or that they were not truly loyal to Sweden or nationally minded enough.138 It does not matter if these groups called themselves national socialists or Nazis, it still does not make them synonymous with German Nazism. Swedish national socialism was inspired by and modeled after its German progenitor, but it was not rare that Swedish Nazis took a stand against Germany. Thus, national socialism cannot be defined based on allegiance to Germany alone. However, sometimes geopolitical conflicts were used as proxies for other political opinions. The most obvious example is the polarity between London and Berlin. The war was often seen as a measurement of force between those two, London representing the status quo as the economic and political center of Europe, with Berlin now challenging that position using military force. Sympathies or hopes for one or the other to prevail were tied together with ideological considerations. Many organizations and individuals not only believed but wished for Germany to win the war and become the new political leaders of Europe. The political preferences of those who wished for Germany’s victory might have differed a lot from model national socialism as this thesis defines it. However, it is important to keep in mind that opposite cases were also common, where individuals adhered quite strongly to national socialist ideology while not actively rooting for Nazi Germany to win the war.139 Another dimension of the same phenomena is connected to the invasions of Norway and Finland. Nazi affiliated actors tended to show deep concern for the Soviet invasion in Finland, while not particularly caring to condemn the occupation of Norway. In the case of the Fredborg circle, as the investigation will show, the concern for Finland far outweighs the concern for Norway.

Conservatism

Fredborg and his friends would suddenly approach and join the mainstream conservative movement in 1940. Before that, Fredborg himself and many of his defenders have claimed he was a conventional conservative both before and after the tennis hall meeting and the production of Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939 and The Swedish Line. Defining conservatism is therefore necessary.

137 Lööw, Nazismen i Sverige 1924-1979, 30–36. 138 Berggren, Nationell Upplysning: Drag i Den Svenska Antisemitismens Historia, 79. 139 Oredsson, Lunds universitet under andra världskriget: Motsättningar, debatter och hjälpinsatser, 10.

36 One possible definition of conservatism is as an independent, coherent ideology, with a consistent history of thought resulting in its current iteration. According to political philosopher Roger Scruton, conservatism emerged during the enlightenment as a necessary counterweight to excess liberalism, although its roots go back to Aristotle.140 Conservative ideology, in this view, is rarely formulated using the same language or concepts as other ideologies, rather, conservatives are preoccupied with what Scruton calls “settlement”, the highly local motive in humans that bind them to customs, a place, or a history that they assume to be theirs - this impulse emphasizes the contingency and dependency of the individual on the community. Community precedes politics, a “first-person plural” that is seen as the basis of all democracy - not the other way around. Individual freedom grows from this trust and communality. Conservatives are sharply distinguished from reactionaries, as Edmund Burke is cited: “We must reform to conserve”.141 However, according to moral philosopher Alasdair Macintyre, modern conservatism is largely concerned with conserving older versions of liberal individualism. This version of conservatism has no guiding principles of its own but is rather a side effect, or a particular mode, of that same liberalism. The Burkean (mis)understanding of tradition as inherently opposed to conflict produces the political impulse of choosing earlier, rather than later variants of liberal thought. Calling for reform of tradition is, according to Macintyre, not the same thing as viewing tradition as a continuity of argumentation and disagreement. The characterization of organic trust and community as an antithesis to conflict thus risks becoming stagnant and unrealistic, producing nothing politically distinct from liberalism.142 Is conservatism a positive ideological movement, with its own clearly defined principles and historical continuity, or should it rather be thought of as a “braking mechanism”, a certain temperament, intrinsically linked to whatever historical process is currently disrupting social life? While conservatism cannot essentially be those two things at the same time, both definitions can still be useful when identifying conservatism in different historical contexts. While Scruton’s definition is most likely to be used by self-identifying conservatives in modern times, Macintyre’s definition can be used to identify non-explicit conservatism. Torstendahl also recognizes this tension between conservatism as an ideology defined by its intentions versus its positive values, although he mostly seems to agree with Macintyre. He adds that conservatism is concerned with the state as an organic entity, to which the individual is secondary.143

140 Roger Scruton, Conservatism: An Invitation to the Great Tradition (New York: Profile Books, 2017), 1; Scruton, 9. 141 Scruton, Conservatism: An Invitation to the Great Tradition, 2–3. 142 Alasdair Macintyre, After Virtue (1981; repr., London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2007), 257–58. 143 Torstendahl, Mellan nykonservatism och liberalism, 14–15; Torstendahl, 208.

37 The conservative movement

Like Fredborg and his friends, Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939, The Swedish Line and Bollhusmötet are often characterized as existing somewhere between the mainstream right-wing milieu and the far- right or fascist spheres. A characterization of the Swedish right-wing milieus during the interwar years and World War II is therefore in order. There was a wide array of opinions in the Swedish conservative movement in the interwar years and during World War II, from the individualist liberalism of Eli Heckscher, often presented through publications like Svensk Tidsskrift, to the national traditionalism and “New Conservatism” centered around the Lund-faction of SNU, glorifying “the sword, the altar, and the throne”.144 The right harbored a combination of conservative and liberal patterns of ideology without really moving in either direction.145 In 1928, protectionism and stately intervention still trumped free trade in the general right-wing milieu, and the national argument also remained stronger than economic liberalism, even though “freedom” was a popular slogan in the parliamentary election. The already mentioned Arvid Lindman of the General Electoral League had an economically liberal outlook on most issues, except for the agrarian questions where he was open to interventions.146 However, these contradictory standpoints do not necessarily indicate hypocrisy according to Torstendahl - Lindman derived both the agrarian interventions and the free market impulses from a larger conception of the nation as an organic entity consisting of complementary parts. The nation's interest was not the same as the market interest - while the value and utility of free trade must be protected, sometimes individual and class interests must be repressed for the good of the whole.147 Around this position, there was debate within the right-wing milieu between those who wanted more economic liberalism and those who wanted more nationalism. The tension was between two conceptions of state – was the state the sum of many individuals, or was it an entity onto itself?148 The Swedish right-wing at this time was grounded in a conservative skepticism toward global finance while being positive toward domestic private enterprise and free trade. The agrarian movement is the clearest expression of this dualism. Many of the anti-capitalist elements were directed, therefore, toward banks and other perceived representatives of international capital – the agrarian movement wanted an autocrat business policy and accused liberals and other conservatives of being lackeys of unproductive capital.149 However, all facets of the right-wing movement saw communism, rather than national socialism, as their primary antagonist and the biggest threat to western civilization in the twentieth

144 Torstendahl, Mellan nykonservatism och liberalism, 182. 145 Torstendahl, 203. 146 Torstendahl, 45–47. 147 Torstendahl, 48. 148 Torstendahl, 63. 149 Torstendahl, 55–58.

38 century.150 The Swedish right wing found its pragmatic point of convergence around restricting state governance, as everyone from the SNU to the Farmer’s League to the AVF wanted a small but strong state apparatus – at least up until the early 1930s when the SNU and the Farmer’s League started embracing more radical policies of state intervention and central planning.151 Democracy was still new in Sweden in the interwar period, having been introduced only a few years back, for men in 1909 and women in 1921. The Swedish conservatives had fought against this development but were now hesitant to either reject or embrace it, taking to a somewhat ambivalent stance – they accepted democracy as a dominant ideology but did not actively condone it.152 The occasional critique was common, praise was rare. The Farmer’s League were fierce critics of parliamentarism, as they viewed themselves as neither left nor right. They held that government should be “unpolitical” and felt that they stood above party divisions – this was an older conservative notion that stood in conflict with the emerging perception of conservatives as a “force” among other political forces. After all, conservatism was nothing else than striving after the common good, against such “forces”.153 At a deeper ideological level, democracy was at odds with the conservative conception of the state as an organic entity and confirmed the liberal view of the state as a collection of individuals. As such, some saw democracy as totally incompatible with any form of conservatism at all.154 The active conservative opposition to the democratic system was centered around the SNU155, however, it was also prevalent within the Farmer’s League where democracy was seen as tied together with global finance capitalism. The Farmer’s League was however not as outspoken about their skepticism as the SNU.156 Some proposed a return to monarchy rule, and the instrument of government from 1809 while keeping some of the democratic institutions. The king was seen as standing outside of the conflicts of interest that raged uncontrollably in the nation.157 Corporatism or corporatist arguments naturally emerged in the interwar years because of the labor situation. In a time where the unions were mobilizing massively in Sweden, conservatives perceived them as dangerous because they would disturb free pricing and trade. The right-wing movement often argued that workers and employers had the same interests, and rather than engaging in class struggle through unions and employer organizations, the workers and employers should get together in a spirit of consensus and rational discussion, laying out the way forward together. As Torstendahl notices, this kind of reasoning is only one step from corporatist

150 Torstendahl, 159–61. 151 Torstendahl, 190–91. 152 Torstendahl, 95–99. 153 Torstendahl, 133–35; Torstendahl, 143. 154 Torstendahl, Mellan nykonservatism och liberalism, 110. 155 Torstendahl, 101. 156 Torstendahl, 105. 157 Torstendahl, 119–21.

39 ideology.158 The impulse to protect a holistic view of the nation from the advent of class- and interest-based politics by implementing corporatism was noticeable in debates within the conservative movement, as fascist Italy and their corporatist system was often painted as an attractive alternative to democracy.159 However, the mainstream right never embraced full corporatism and kept a strong distinction between interest groups and political organizations.160 There was a strong opinion for corporatism in the SNU, where it was seen as a good tool for suppressing democracy, the “twin brother of liberalism” as writer and political activist put it.161 Corporatism could create an integrated, organic nation, and the Swedish King was sometimes suggested as the deciding instance to discern and make the final call among the conflicting interests in society. Yet, this current would not win a majority in SNU until shortly before the whole organization was thrown out in the political cold by the mainstream conservatives in the 1930s.162 Interest-based politics prevailed as the mainline opinion while corporatism was largely viewed as incompatible with economic liberalism, something that both constituted its attractiveness among traditionalists and led to its ultimate rejection by moderate conservatives.163

The National Youth League of Sweden

Arvid Fredborg joined Sveriges nationella ungdomsförbund, SNU, (“The National Youth League of Sweden”) in 1934 and remained a member indefinitely, together with some of his friends and political allies – Igor Holmstedt even founded the local SNU association in Uppsala (see the subchapter “Who is Arvid Fredborg?”). To understand the significance of Fredborg’s engagement in SNU, and why it also matters when Fredborg joined the SNU, a history of the organization is required. The National Youth League of Sweden was founded in 1915 as an independent youth wing to the conservative General Electoral League.164 Its politics were traditionalist and nationalist and used the epithet “New Conservatism” to place themselves to the right of the conservative mainstream which included their parent party AVF, viewing these movements as an ideologically contourless old guard.165 These “New Conservatives” had an agenda that was opposed to liberalism altogether. As chairperson-to-be Elmo Lindholm (1897-1987) said in 1923: “We want to teach our people, that above class stands the kingdom, the ancient kingdom of Svea, for whose assertion no sacrifice is too big, no labor too heavy”.166

158 Torstendahl, 78. 159 Torstendahl, 104–6; Torstendahl, 121–22. 160 Torstendahl, Mellan nykonservatism och liberalism, 78; Torstendahl, 83. 161 Torstendahl, Mellan nykonservatism och liberalism, 123. 162 Torstendahl, 86–90. 163 Torstendahl, 94. 164 Berggren, Nationell Upplysning: Drag i Den Svenska Antisemitismens Historia, 76. 165 Torstendahl, Mellan nykonservatism och liberalism, 9. 166 Torstendahl, 154.

40 As the Swedish right was moving in a slightly more democratic direction during the 1920s, the National Youth League of Sweden became more and more involved with far-right and even national socialist organizations. After the election of the new chairperson Lindholm in 1932167 the SNU called for state control over capitalism and national planned economy, adapting harsh rhetoric in their outward communication (one brochure bore the headline “We declare war….”).168 This created an infected clash between the General Electoral League and the SNU. The Nazi sympathies that Lindholm now expressed were problematic to the AVF mostly because of the economic implications – the AVF saw both socialist, Nazi, and American New Deal economic planning as a threat to individual economic freedom and entrepreneurship. This autocratic national socialism that was advocated by Swedish Nazi parties was now being proposed by their own youth wing.169 Attempts were made to mend the wounds, and the SNU tried to assure the AVF that they did not entirely reject economic liberalism – yet the rift was still too deep. The SNU had broken one of the fundamental principles that held the disparate right-wing movement together, and the National Youth League was gradually shunned by the mainstream right and the General Electoral League during 1933 and 1934.170 The AVF, however, failed to replace its youth wing, a fact that would later benefit the Fredborg circle when they sought to join the mainstream right-wing movement. In Uppsala, the Heimdal association also distanced themselves from SNU, protesting their attempts to “introduce the spirit of German National Socialism”.171 In 1934, the National Youth League of Sweden changed its name to simply Sveriges Nationella Förbund, SNF, (“The National League of Sweden”), entering the national elections as a political party in their own right, with little success. From 1940 and onwards the party can be considered Nazi affiliated, fully rallying behind Germany, and thus belonging to the same political milieu as other Swedish national socialist organizations.172 Oredsson categorizes the SNU/SNF as extreme right, antidemocratic, and partially Nazi affiliated, yet not as a Nazi organization altogether.173 According to Torsendahl, the SNU shift toward Nazism is not as surprising as it might seem – proponents of new conservatism were forced into literal or alleged allyship with Hitler, as the likeness between their ideological goals and the real politics of Germany made it difficult to be independent or purely Swedish traditionalist or fascist.174

167 Torstendahl, 68–71. 168 Torstendahl, 69–70. 169 Torstendahl, 72–73. 170 Torstendahl, 203. 171 Oredsson, Lunds universitet under andra världskriget: Motsättningar, debatter och hjälpinsatser, 16. 172 Oredsson, 16–17; Berggren, Nationell Upplysning: Drag i Den Svenska Antisemitismens Historia, 76–77. 173 Oredsson, Lunds universitet under andra världskriget: Motsättningar, debatter och hjälpinsatser, 9. 174 Torstendahl, Mellan nykonservatism och liberalism, 206–7.

41 The Fredborg circle examined

This chapter will examine and analyze Arvid Fredborg’s archival material about the tennis hall meeting, the journal Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939, and the political pamphlet The Swedish Line. All background literature, along with Fredborg’s autobiography itself, makes it clear that these three were the major ideological expressions of the Fredborg circle. They also came into being shortly before the group entered into mainstream political work in late 1940, in a time when the group tried to build an independent political movement with independent goals, each time using different strategies but developing the same ideas. As an introduction, Arvid Fredborg will be introduced at length, then Fredborg’s circle of friends and political allies are summarized and described more briefly. While this thesis is not primarily concerned with Fredborg as an individual, he is by far the most prolific person who both participated in and continually commented on the tennis hall meeting and the following political projects of 1939 and 1940. Then, the three major sources of this study, documents from Bollhusmötet, Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939, and The Swedish Line will be analyzed individually in separate subchapters. The ideological expressions of these documents are of primary interest, although these are interwoven with historical circumstances and additional events that will also be explored when necessary. All through the investigation, the material is compared to the descriptions and stories in Arvid Fredborg’s autobiography Destination: Berlin. It often clashes with the primary source material, displaying the friction and confusion that has arguably given rise to the debate about the tennis hall meeting. It is important to fairly assess and make sense of these contradictions to create a clearer picture of the events surrounding the tennis hall meeting. The contradictions and falsehoods in Destination: Berlin are also what motivates an interpretation along the lines of the hermeneutics of demystification – the contents of the source material will be analyzed side by side with the contradicting narrative of the autobiography and other historical context, and the friction between the different recollections will act as the site of interpretation. The goal of the interpretation is to demystify this tangled narrative and unearth the actual historical events.

Who was Arvid Fredborg?

Arvid Fredborg might not be a household name in the Swedish political canon today, but in 1943 he gained international notoriety with his book Bakom Stålvallen (“Behind the Steel Wall”), where he writes about Nazi Germany from his position of being a Berlin correspondent for newspaper Svenska Dagbladet. At the time of its release, the book was supposedly considered not only as a harsh critique against the Nazi regime, but also a revelation of the atrocities committed against Jews under Hitler. However, this perception of Fredborg and Behind the Steel Wall has come under

42 scrutiny in recent years – ethnologist Ingvar Svanberg and historian Mattias Tydén have argued that Fredborg was far from first to write about the atrocities of Nazi Germany, adding that he also misjudged the extent of the Nazi , failing to see the gravity of the events and their central place in Nazi politics. Instead, he shifted the blame to elements within the Nazi power structure, rather than seeing Nazi Germany as responsible.175 This was also noted by journalist Edgar Ansel Mowrer, who is mentioned in Fredborgs memoirs. He calls Behind the Steel Wall “annoyingly “objective” and “neutral”, while accusing Fredborg of “half-excusing” the Nazis.176 Fredborg describes many such responses by readers who wanted him to state out loud “what he really thinks of the Germans”. Fredborg dismisses these critiques by arguing that he did not want to subject the Germans to collective punishment.177 The ambiguity of Behind the Steel Wall was one of the subjects of the debate between Ola Larsmo and Jan Myrdal in 2006 (see the subchapter “Relevance today: Recent debate about the tennis hall meeting”). In any case, Swedish conservative author, journalist, and foreign policy analyst Arvid Fredborg still became famous as a conservative opponent of Nazism during and after World War II. He lived on to be a consultant and earned a Ph.D. in history as well as authoring several additional books before his death in 1996. His legacy has especially lived on in the Swedish bourgeois milieu, where he has arguably acted as something of a symbol for conservative resistance against fascism.178 Arvid Fredborg’s earliest political impulses are described by him in his memoirs. According to Fredborg, they revolve around a very early emotional attachment to monarchy, or patriotism through loyalty to the monarchy.179 He writes that he developed a fascination for Hungary early on, which would later develop into an admiration for Austria and the Habsburg monarchy which led him to study romance languages.180 Fredborg also describes how he saw the Swedish monarchy as an absolute authority. According to his memoirs, when he and his friends were campaigning against the Swedish coalition government for not standing with Finland in the conflict between Finland and the Soviet Union, he immediately stood down once the king spoke out against the cause - even though the social democratic prime minister had uttered the same opinion not long before.181 The military was also one of the absolute cornerstones in Fredbergs political life and he spends much time lamenting the 1925 defense act in Sweden, which was an act of disarmament – it supposedly caused the then 9-year-old Fredborg to cry tears of shock and despair. He interpreted the policy as an act of national treason. This is what he describes as the starting point for his

175 Svanberg and Tydén, Sverige Och Förintelsen: Debatt Och Dokument Om Europas Judar 1933-1945, 334. 176 Fredborg, Destination: Berlin, 341. 177 Fredborg, 374. 178 “Namn Att Minnas – Arvid Fredborg,” Svensk Tidsskrift, December 31, 1965. 179 Fredborg, Destination: Berlin, 31. 180 Fredborg, 28; Fredborg, 52; Fredborg, 45–46. 181 Fredborg, Destination: Berlin, 161.

43 political interest, a perspective that would he argues would remain conservative and traditionalist throughout his life.182 Fredborg’s diary is full of extravagant anecdotes and stories that should probably be taken with a grain of salt, yet they are still valuable as they tell us something about his self-perception. However, half-truths, omissions, and falsehoods also hide in the less extravagant sections of the book. According to Fredborg, he came to Uppsala to study English in 1933 and immediately became politically active.183 He describes how he soon joined the Heimdal association and then Nationella Studentklubben (“The Nationalist Student Club”), which was a local branch of the SNU. However, there are serious problems with this narrative, as Ola Larsmo has pointed out in Djävulssonaten. According to Fredborg, he joins these organizations just before the split between SNU and Heimdal in 1933 (which is also before the following split between the SNU and the mainstream conservative movement in 1934). Yet, in the Student membership register of the Nationalist Student Club, Larsmo finds that Fredborg becomes a member “after 1934”.184 And sure enough, in Fredborg’s private archive from 1934, there is a membership certificate with the date February 2 of 1934 written on it – that is, right at the end of the ongoing split between the AVF and the SNU that took place over a period of time in late 1933 and early 1934.185 Fredborg explains his continuing membership in the SNU as a mere formality186, yet according to the membership register, he entered the board as paymaster in 1935 and remained so until 1940. This means that Fredborg and his friends had a parallel engagement in the Heimdal association and the SNU, even though Heimdal had formally severed its ties with the SNU many years back.187 This further complicates later parts of Fredborg’s narrative. He states that one of the major reasons for his decision not to enter parliamentary politics was a realization that came to him when the split between the SNU and AVF occurred, that it was clear he did not belong with SNU.188 Yet how can this be when he entered the SNU after the split? He further details that he and his friends did not feel at home in the “old right” either, citing a letter to his close friend Igor Holmstedt in 1935 where he expressed his skepticism about the Swedish parliament, preferring a strong monarch who could stand above the political quarrels and act as a unifying voice. This hesitance is cited as another reason why he did not engage in parliamentary politics himself, and it sure is a more plausible reason than the first one he gave.189

182 Fredborg, 13–15. 183 Fredborg, 41. 184 Larsmo, Djävulssonaten. Ur det svenska hatets historia., 26. 185 “Membership Certificate: ‘Aktiv Medlem Av Nationella Ungdomsförbundet i Uppsala,’” 1934, Arvid Fredborg: Efterlämnade papper. 186 Fredborg, Destination: Berlin, 53. 187 Larsmo, Djävulssonaten. Ur det svenska hatets historia., 24–27. 188 Fredborg, Destination: Berlin, 52–53. 189 Fredborg, 54.

44 What Fredborg leaves out is that the discussion per letter with Holmstedt was not about monarchy versus parliamentary democracy, but monarchy versus some variant of national socialism, which clearly illustrates the divide between the far-right and fascist perspectives as it is defined in this study. In a reply to Fredborg’s letter, Holmstedt argues that monarchism in its current form is weak and ineffective while nationalism is vague, preferring instead “nationalism and socialism”, trying to dissuade Fredborg’s doubts about this socialism, “our socialism”.190 In the preceding letter from Holmstedt, he argues that nationalism and socialism, if understood correctly, are inseparable and even identical – two sides of the same coin. What is needed is a strong state that can transform society. While the monarchy is an end to itself, a strong government is the proper instrument for the execution of the national revolution.191 Fredborg remarks that the word “socialist” should be removed from the equation altogether because of his ideological dislike for socialists at large. Holmstedt answers that national socialism is only socialist when it comes to complete control over production, currency, and trade, not private property as such, even though he believes private property to be a chimera in this context. Socialism is, in this case, not the monopoly of workers, but the concern of the entire people. “Their ideology” is also socialist because it is utopian, writes Holmstedt. Besides, what should “their ideology” be called otherwise? It is not conservatism, nor liberalism, nor even nationalism, since nationalism says nothing about any particular economic system, Holmstedt writes.192 The tone of the letter suggests that Fredborg at least partially shares these goals, yet is probably not entirely convinced about some of the ideological particularities, remaining for now rooted in his reactionary monarchism – in his memoirs he describes Holmstedt as impressed by Swedish fascist , someone Fredborg allegedly sees as unsympathetic and fanatical.193 Holmstedts possible influence on Fredborg will become clearer later on as we examine the projects and texts that Fredborg and Holmstedt would go on to produce in collaboration. Looking for answers in Fredborg’s archive, many newspaper clippings can be found from when he participated enthusiastically in the on-campus debates during Uppsala in 1933 and 1934. These debates were almost always about socialism, of which Fredborg always appeared as a scathing critic. In these debates he also expressed his antipathy toward communists, arguing that it is the mission of “struggling conservatism” to beat down the “traitor communist movement”. There is a popular will to destroy communism once and for all, argues Fredborg – the question is just how it should be done. He displays a somewhat ambivalent stance toward national socialism in these debates but consequently criticizes German Nazism. In one of the debates, Fredborg claims that Nazism has

190 Igor Holmstedt, “Letter from Igor Holmstedt, 2,” July 21, 1935, Arvid Fredborg: Efterlämnade papper. 191 Igor Holmstedt, “Letter from Igor Holmstedt, 1,” June 16, 1935, Arvid Fredborg: Efterlämnade papper. 192 Holmstedt, “Letter from Igor Holmstedt, 2,” July 21, 1935. 193 Fredborg, Destination: Berlin, 42–44.

45 miscredited nationalism, and now nationalists cannot even breathe without being lumped together with Hitler.194 In conclusion, as Fredborg’s reasoning for his political commitment in the 1930s does not hold up, the exact nature of his political choices becomes blurred and remains in the obscurity between his descriptions and the material that contradicts it. The picture emerges of a charismatic young traditionalist with deep sympathies for the monarchy and concerns about military disarmament. He enters into the SNU just when they had begun to seriously diverge from the mainstream right- wing movement and move in a fascist direction. From thereon, he goes on to participate in campus debates as a fierce anti-communist.

Who were Arvid Fredborg’s friends?

In Destination: Berlin Fredborg describes his political allies as a conservative group of friends that stuck together and were politically aware, managing to dominate the debates of the 1930s. The question is not about whether this circle existed as a political entity, but rather what the political nature of that entity was and what role it played.195 While this study is not a network analysis so much as it is an investigation into a political and ideological milieu, a grasp of who cooperated with Fredborg is important. Ideology is not free-floating or abstract but is concretely rooted in people. Also, it is unlikely that Fredborg was the only important person in the political milieu that formed around the tennis hall meeting. While Fredborg was certainly a foreground figure, his importance might be overstated by the fact that he has so vocal about the events, both during 1939-1940 and later in his life. Others might have been more discreet. According to Larsmo, the more you look at the run-up to the meeting, the more Fredborg and his comrades appear.196 This seems to be true. By listing all the participants, authors, co-signers, and speakers from the source material, and sorting them from most participatory to least participatory, the result is a list very similar to Fredborg’s account of who stood close to him during these years. Since the full list includes over 40 people, a minimum limit of participation has been set at two events.

194 “Fackföreningsrörelsen under Debatt.,” Upsala, November 29, 1933, Arvid Fredborg: Efterlämnade papper; “Socialdemokratien Och Folkgemenskapen,” Upsala, November 4, 1933, Arvid Fredborg: Efterlämnade papper; “Ture Nerman Tror På Svensk Nazistdiktatur,” Upsala, September 1933, Arvid Fredborg: Efterlämnade papper; “Tisdagens Nazistdebatt,” Upsala, January 19, 1934, Arvid Fredborg: Efterlämnade papper. 195 Fredborg, Destination: Berlin, 142. 196 Larsmo, Djävulssonaten. Ur det svenska hatets historia., 49.

46 Senders of Signers of the Authors of motions to General Signers of the Heimdal's Authors of Co-signers of summon committee Directorate Speakers at Yearly Review The Swedish The Swedish Bollhusmötet resolution resolution Bollhusmötet 1939 Line Line

Thor Åke Leissner

Erik Anners

Louis Campanello

Arvid Fredborg

Igor Holmstedt

Birger Ryding Ulf Hård af Segerstad

Dag E. Bergman

Adolf Hamilton Axel A:son Liljencrantz

Stig Radhe

Bertil Sylwan

Rune Waldekranz

Tord Wickbom

It is important to keep in mind that some forms of participation, like speaking at the tennis hall meeting, have more gravity than other participation, like co-signing The Swedish Line. Another potentially neglected aspect is unofficial participation – we know, for example, that Fredborg had a hand in the original General committee resolution, even if he is not listed in the protocol. Still, this list is a useful entry point, and at least serves as an indication of importance in the Fredborg circle. Thor Åke Leissner was the most active of all members of the Fredborg circle. He was a law student who Frededorg met at Södermanland-Närke Nation, and was a board member of the Heimdal association, both before and after the Heimdal coup197 (described in the subchapter “Heimdal's Yearly Review 1939”). He also founded the local SNU/SNF association in Uppsala after the split from AVF in 1934, in which he was an active board member and worked together with Stig Radhe and Rune Waldekrantz on a project mapping Jews and Jewish influence in Uppsala in 1935.198 Leissner was later hired by the Swedish conservative party Högerns riksorganisation (“National Organization of the Right”), currently The of Sweden. Erik Anners was a law student who had political interests similar to Fredborgs. He was a board member of Heimdal from 1937 onwards,199 and the chairman of the Heimdal association 1943- 1944. He became the chairman of Sweden’s Conservative Student Association, currently the

197 Fredborg, Destination: Berlin, 44; Fredborg, 74–75. 198 Larsmo, Djävulssonaten. Ur det svenska hatets historia., 18–24. 199 Larsmo, 34.

47 Confederation of Swedish Conservative and Liberal Students, and later a professor of legal history at Stockholm University. Anners was also a member of the Swedish parliament in the sixties.200 Louis Campanello was a close friend of Fredborg, judging by their exchange of many letters and telegrams, but he is surprisingly absent from Destination: Berlin, his name only being mentioned a couple of times. He was a law student who later left for Paris to study economic geography and administrative law, and he became a successful real estate businessman. According to Larsmo, he was a member of SNU/SNF.201 In his later years, he seems to have gained a reputation as an architectural modernist partaking in large-scale urban demolitions.202 Igor Holmstedt was a law student who met Arvid Fredborg in 1933, and according to Destination: Berlin they “immediately started to solve the riddles of life” through the lively discussions of their friendship. He is described by Fredborg as being inspired by the New Swedish Movement, a fascist political project, and by the radical views of fascist Per Engdahl.203 These views are detailed in Fredborg’s and Holmstedt’s letter exchange (see the previous subchapter “Who was Arvid Fredborg?”) where he practically comes out as a national socialist in 1935. The letters also make it clear that he participated in political and organizational work together with Per Engdahl during this time.204 He was the chairman of the Heimdal association 1939-1941. Holmstedt became the ombudsman of Sweden’s Conservative Student Association after 1940 before he became a municipal politician and later an official in the chancellery of the Right-Wing National Association.205 Not much is known about Birger Ryding, even though he is one of the most active participants in the tennis hall meeting, and the one behind the initial motion to summon it. He was a member of the Västmnalands-Dala Nation and the Heimdal association. Ulf Hård af Segerstad studied design, furniture design, and land-use planning, and was a member of SNU/SNF and Heimdal.206 In 1939, he became a journalist for Svenska Dagbladet, and later had a successful career as a writer and critic. He was awarded the title of honorary doctor at Uppsala University in 1979.207 Dag E. Bergman who happens to be the older brother of Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman, met Arvid Fredborg in 1935, and they bonded over their similar political opinions and interests. He was a member of SNU/SNF and studied a Bachelor of Arts in Uppsala as well as a

200 Carl-Johan Westholm, “Ett Redaktörsporträtt: Erik Anners,” Svensk Tidsskrift, September 23, 2011; Fredborg, Destination: Berlin, 57–58. 201 Paul Harnesk, Vem är Vem? / Götaland utom Skåne, Halland, Blekinge 1965 (Örebro: Bokförlaget Vem är Vem AB, 1965), 200, http://runeberg.org/vemarvem/gota65/0224.html; Larsmo, Djävulssonaten. Ur det svenska hatets historia., 102. 202 “Modernismens rivningsgeneral död,” Vänstra Stranden (blog), June 1, 2007, https://vanstrastranden.blog/2007/06/01/modernismens-rivningsgeneral-dod/. 203 Fredborg, Destination: Berlin, 43–44. 204 Holmstedt, “Letter from Igor Holmstedt, 2,” July 21, 1935. 205 Larsmo, Djävulssonaten. Ur det svenska hatets historia., 113–14. 206 Larsmo, 102. 207 Carl Otto Werkelid, “Ulf Hård Af Segerstad Är Död,” Svenska Dagbladet, February 13, 2006.

48 law degree at Stockholm University. He joined the Swedish Volunteer Corps during the Winter War in Finland, before becoming a Swedish diplomat and the Consul General in Hong-Kong.208 Not much is known about Adolf Hamilton, except that he was a friend of Gunnar Biörck who was a driving force behind the Stockholm student protests and a leading figure in the Stockholm- based organization Swedish Youth, which the Fredborg friendship group collaborated with to produce The Swedish Line.209 Hamilton was a member of the SNU/SNF and a board member of Heimdal.210 Axel A:son Liljencrantz is also mostly unknown, although he seems to have become a librarian at Uppsala University library Carolina Rediviva.211 Stig Radhe was a law student who Fredborg first encountered in the Heimdal association.212 He was also an active member of SNU/SNF and took part in the already mentioned mapping of Uppsala Jews, as well as a member of Heimdal.213 Radhe would later become a chairperson for the Swedish legal association and the municipal head of administration for the police and courts in Stockholm, before starting his own law firm in 1968.214 Bertil Sylwan was a member of SNU/SNF and Heimdal.215 He was a law student that would later be a member of the Swedish Volunteer Corps during the Winter War in Finland. He went on to be a lawyer and a local politician for the Liberal Peoples Party.216 Rune Waldekranz was a member of Heimdal and an active member of SNU/SNF who worked on the previously mentioned mapping of Uppsala Jews.217 He studied literary history and became a film critic for Svenska Dagbladet, later a film producer as well as Sweden’s first Professor of film studies and president of the Swedish Film Academy.218 Tord Wickbom studied Finnish and was a member of Heimdal and the Stockholm-based organization Swedish Youth - thus he acted as yet another bridge to the cooperation that would birth The Swedish Line. He was also a member of the Swedish Volunteer Corps.219 He became a correspondent for Svenska Dagbladet, and later became a foreign correspondent for the public service company Sweden’s Radio.220

208 Tore Pryser and Anders Thunberg, “En Sfinx, En Gåta,” Dagens Nyheter, November 15, 2007; Fredborg, Destination: Berlin, 57; Larsmo, Djävulssonaten. Ur det svenska hatets historia., 28. 209 Fredborg, Destination: Berlin, 148. 210 Larsmo, Djävulssonaten. Ur det svenska hatets historia., 28; Larsmo, 34. 211 “Carolina Rediviva, Bibliotekarie Axel Liljencrantz Har Ordnat En Utställning Av Eric Österlunds Teckningar Och Akvareller, Uppsala, Februari 1960,” accessed May 11, 2021, https://digitaltmuseum.se/021018592959/carolina-rediviva-bibliotekarie-axel-liljencrantz-har-ordnat-en-utstallning. 212 Fredborg, Destination: Berlin, 43. 213 Larsmo, Djävulssonaten. Ur det svenska hatets historia., 22. 214 “Stig Radhe; Styrs Sverige Av En Assistentmaffia?,” Svensk Tidsskrift, December 31, 1985. 215 Larsmo, Djävulssonaten. Ur det svenska hatets historia., 28; Larsmo, 32. 216 “Bertil Sylwan. Rättrådig Advokat Med Social Medkänsla,” Dagens Nyheter, December 15, 2003. 217 Larsmo, Djävulssonaten. Ur det svenska hatets historia., 22; Larsmo, 110. 218 “Rune Waldekranz - Svensk filmdatabas,” accessed May 11, 2021, http://www.svenskfilmdatabas.se/sv/item/?type=PERSON&itemid=61329; Jill Salander Mortensen, Vem Är Det: Svensk Biografisk Handbok 1997 (Gjøvik: Norstedts Förlag AB, 1996), 1157. 219 Fredborg, Destination: Berlin, 71; Fredborg, 157. 220 “T G Wickbom Har Avlidit,” Barometern OT, February 14, 2011.

49 The tennis hall meeting

This subchapter examines and interprets the 1939 tennis hall meeting, or Bollhusmötet – its preparations, speeches, and the direct aftermath. By looking at Fredborg’s description of the events in 1985 and comparing these to the historical documents found in his own Bollhusmötet-capsule, serious discrepancies arise that motivate an independent analysis of the material. While a multitude of interests and circumstances converged to form the final resolution, this subchapter finds that the tennis hall meeting was ultimately coordinated by Fredborg and his circle of political allies with the motive of affecting public opinion and stoke nationwide antisemitic sentiments. The tone of individual argumentation differed, but the Fredborg circle essentially presented the same idea – the Swedish youth must rise up to stop the flow of Jewish refugees into Sweden to protect the Swedish race from contamination. Jews are portrayed as manipulators and bringers of social decay. The notion of a conspiratorial force that is working in the shadows for the admittance of racially inferior people into Sweden is also constant throughout their argumentation. In his later years, Fredborg has tried to retroactively legitimize this movement under the guise of apologies that are hard to believe since they are based on factual errors. In the aftermath of Bollhusmötet Fredborg corresponded with and offered help to students in other Swedish cities who wanted to replicate the tennis hall meeting.

Lead-up to the tennis hall meeting

Lena Berggren describes the student protests of 1939 as the most successful attempt by Swedish Nazis to incite antisemitism outside their organizations, as the Stockholm protests started through a collaboration between national socialists and students. On February 6 of 1939, a torchlight procession and a meeting in Stockholm were organized by Svensk-socialistiska studentförbundet (“the Swedish-Socialist Student Union”), the student wing of national socialist organization Svenska socialistiska partiet (“ Socialist Party”), together with the student unions of the Dentist institute, the Pharmaceutical institute as well as the Medical association at the university Karolinska Institute. Together they spoke out against the admittance of Jewish refugees.221 Meanwhile, the preparations for the tennis hall meeting were already underway. The initiative for a student gathering to discuss the refugee question came from the many different so-called student nations in Uppsala – these are autonomous student clubs that organize most extracurricular student activities, named after Swedish provinces, to be a second home for students from different parts of Sweden. This form of organization is a unique feature of the universities at Uppsala and Lund - they are independent of, but still connected to, the student unions, and have some joint

221 Berggren, Nationell Upplysning: Drag i Den Svenska Antisemitismens Historia, 80–81; Larsmo, Djävulssonaten. Ur det svenska hatets historia., 50.

50 organizational features and procedures. Uppsala Student Union received its first motion suggesting a student gathering to discuss the refugee question from Västmanlands-Dala Nation on February 3, proposed by second curator Birger Ryding. This motion was then supported by Gästrike- Hälsingland Nation on February 6, through a communication originally proposed by Arvid Fredborg. Västmanlands-Dala’s request was then yet again supported by Värmlands Nation, on a proposal by Igor Holmstedt on February 8, and then yet again by Västgöta Nation on February 9 via a proposal made by Adolf Hamilton. The Student Union General Committee gathered before the last two supporting statements arrived, on February 6.222 Ryding wrote an opinion piece in student journal Ergo, published on February 11 and saved by Arvid Fredborg in his Bollhusmötet-collection, where he explains the reasoning behind Västmanlands-Dala Nation’s request. According to the article, the admittance of intellectual refugees would cause work scarcity for domestic intellectuals, which would lead to student “irritation” that could benefit extreme political grouping and parties. To preserve the political stability among the student population, the Student Union must give voice to these concerns. He and Västmanlands-Dala Nation wishes for the student union to make a statement, across all political divisions, where students simply present their objective interests.223 In the same paper, he is answered by Erik Sandberg, former chairperson of Fria Kristliga Studentföreningen (“the Free Christian Student Association”) and co-author of the petition for aiding refugees sent to the prime minister in December 1938. He questions the reasoning behind the work scarcity argument (after all, does not refugee intellectuals also contribute to the economy to create new jobs?) and urges students to show solidarity with the refugees, arguing that humanitarian need surpasses considerations about race and nationality.224 On the next page, Thor Åke Leissner also contributes with an opinion piece titled “The national students and the immigration politics” where he makes a similar argument to that of Ryding and tries to further de-politicize the issue. He warns against making the student gathering into a clash between political forces and would rather have a discussion strictly about the interest of the students, focused on factual issues. The Heimdal association had just voted in favor of not participating in the meeting as a political organization for this reason, according to Leissner - he hopes that left-leaning organizations like Laboremus and Verdandi will do the same. He also argues that even if there is a demand for labor in certain sectors, that labor should be reserved for returning Swedish intellectuals currently employed in foreign countries, so even if there were vacant jobs for the refugees, these employments would still displace potential Swedish practitioners. In the end, this would create an “intellectual proletariat” that would harbor political hatred and un-humanitarian views.225

222 Larsmo, Djävulssonaten. Ur det svenska hatets historia., 49–50. 223 Birger Ryding, “Studentkåren Och Flyktingarna,” Ergo, February 11, 1939, Arvid Fredborg: Efterlämnade papper. 224 Erik Sandberg, “Den Humanitära Ståndpunkten,” Ergo, February 11, 1939, Arvid Fredborg: Efterlämnade papper. 225 H.Å. Leissner, “De Nationella Studenterna Och Invandringspolitiken,” Ergo, February 11, 1939, Arvid Fredborg: Efterlämnade papper.

51 In Fredborg’s archive, we find an opinion piece published in Nya Dagliga Allehanda on February 13. Both in his cutout and the context of the whole newspaper, it is unclear who the actual author is. However, there is evidence to suggest Fredborg has had some input. For one, the structure of the article, as well as the arguments made in it, are very similar to Fredborg’s points of view in his speech and the general argumentation presented during the tennis hall meeting. Second, Fredborg was a frequent contributor to Nya Dagligt Alleahnda throughout the 1930s, writing articles and sometimes acting as a correspondent.226 Yet, Fredborg’s connections to the political editorial staff at NDA go even further. The political editor Ivar Öman was the cousin of Fredborg’s father and acted as a mentor for the young Fredborg from the early 1930s and onwards, encouraging his political interest, helping him with school, and giving him advice. They often corresponded by letter.227 Fredborg later developed a close relationship with other members of the NDA political editorial staff, like Leonard Ljunglund, who Fredborg would work under as a writer for the newspaper Free Opposition.228 It is not unreasonable to assume that the NDA political editorial staff’s specific knowledge about student organizational procedures as well the student gathering, comes from Fredborg in some shape or form. Regardless, the significance of the opinion piece is suggested by its placement in Fredborg’s archive - together with the above-mentioned debate in Ergo, this is one of the first documents in the collection. The article states that the critique against the admittance of refugees has however become like blows in the air. The gates are wide open for intellectual refugees and those in power are cheating the general public. There is no saying, claims the article, where the import of foreigners will stop. The author speculates that after we allow the ten male doctors in, maybe ten female doctors will follow, and then the nurses will also follow, and so on. This uncertainty, the article goes on, creates irritation and conflict, and could lead to a ruthless antisemitic movement in Sweden. The author claims that the academic youth are more intuitive than most when it comes to contemporary developments, and the mere fact that a meeting has been called indicates the gravity of the problem - Student Union Gatherings only happen about once per ten years. The author asks the readers - will the students find the unifying slogan that this country is waiting for? With all due respect to the dire need that prevails in Europe, “one cannot demand that our studying youth should be sacrificed for the sake of fleeing foreigners”, continues this line of reasoning. It is described as “a question of the life of the Swedish youth and nation” that the “tidal wave” of refugees is stopped. The argumentation in the article is familiar at this point – without explicitly mentioning race, Jews are made responsible for the antisemitism they allegedly bring with them automatically, thus it implicitly suggests that Jews are a corrosive force in society. The article also works as a perfect example of a certain tactic employed by those opposed to aiding the refugees – first, the article

226 Fredborg, Destination: Berlin, 32; Fredborg, 67; Fredborg, 72. 227 Fredborg, Destination: Berlin, 28. 228 Fredborg, 72–73.

52 creates insecurity about the number of refugees on the way, suggesting that a countless number of Jews are being let in by scheming officials, while in reality, regulations were practically unchanged and there was currently only 2029 Jewish refugees in Sweden at this point.229 The article then goes on to suggest that the only remedy for this dangerous insecurity, that the author has himself created, is to come down hard on the admittance of Jewish refugees. The notion of betrayal by forces within the state is also prevalent here and will return in full-fledged form when Fredborg speaks at the tennis hall meeting in the following sections of this chapter. Now, the time had come for the General Committee, a small decision-making assembly, to discuss the statement concerning the refugee question and the public student gathering that was proposed by Västmanlands-Dala Nation. During two meetings, different versions of a resolution were discussed, scrapped, and changed. Present at the meeting were both Erik Sandberg and Tore Tallroth, chairperson of liberal/humanist association Verdandi, both authors of the 1938 petition for refugee aid. However, Thor Åke Leissner, Louis Campanello, Birger Ryding, and Ulf Hård af Segerstad, along with an unknown student called Paul Rudström, suggested a resolution that won the vote. During the meeting, the opposition refers to this group as the “Heimdalites” because of their membership in the Heimdal association.230 On February 14, the suggested text was then brought forward to the Student Union Directorate, which is a larger assembly comparable to a parliament. There, the text was mildly altered, adding one sentence, marked bold below:

In connection with the problem concerning the immigration to Sweden of intellectual refugees, which has been further actualized these days, Uppsala students, gathered for a general meeting, want to make a submissive request to the King that the future livelihoods of academic youth should not be jeopardized by placing foreign intellectual labor so that well-qualified men and women are deprived of the opportunity to use their knowledge in the service of the motherland.

With rising concerns, Uppsala students follow the development. We understand the difficult situation of the refugees and believe that Sweden should not withdraw its share in the relief work, but it seems to us our right and duty to state that this should not lead to measures that must create hitherto unknown problems of a fatal nature for Sweden.

Uppsala, February 14, 1939

This sentence was the result of what the protocol describes as a “lively discussion” between, among others, Thor Åke Leissner and Igor Holmstedt on one side and Erik Sandberg and Tore Tallroth on the other. The first written iteration of this version bears the headline “The compromise”, and as such the text was signed by 75 people, including Erik Sandberg and the rest of the 1938- delegation for refugee aid. 231

229 Berggren, Nationell Upplysning: Drag i Den Svenska Antisemitismens Historia, 81. 230 Larsmo, Djävulssonaten. Ur det svenska hatets historia., 51. 231 “Protokoll Fört Vid Gästrike-Helsinge Nations Ordinarie Landskapsmöte, Måndagen d. 6 Febr. 1939,” February 6, 1939, Gästrike-Hälsinge nations arkiv.

53 The next day, Fredborg received a letter from student Sven Eriksson, later Sven Ekbo, a fellow member of Västmanlands-Dala Nation who was present at the Directorate-meeting and signed the compromise resolution.232 Fredborg was performing his military service at this time and was stationed in Stockholm.233 Eriksson writes that the resolution the Directorate ended up agreeing on deviated from the “Leissnerian” proposition on several crucial points, attaching a copy of the old resolution with the changes filled in by pencil. He especially finds the added sentence, “we understand the difficult situation of the refugees and believe that Sweden should not withdraw its share in the relief work” to be inappropriate and writes that he is surprised that Leissner accepted it. However, he continues, the only reason they accepted the sentence is that Erik Sandström threatened to submit a counterproposal. It was a result of damage control but could still be strategically advantageous - the current version was signed by all present members of the Directorate, and Eriksson argued that it therefore had the potential to gather a very broad opinion. In Fredborg’s autobiography, he writes that he was outraged by the changes made to the resolution because in his mind the added sentence risked “opening the gates wide” for refugees. This was not the text he and his friends had agreed on, he writes, as the original resolution was written during one of his visits to Uppsala during January. He goes on to describe that the letter prompted him to request temporary leave from the military and to return to Uppsala. According to this narrative, he now decided that he would return and speak at the student gathering, two days before it took place, and thus informed his surprised friends that he would be coming back and work to restore the original resolution.234 Now, this he did, but the order of the events is mixed up. First of all, in the letter Fredborg receives from Eriksson on February 15 it is clear that he is already slated to speak at the tennis hall meeting, and that the friendship circle has already started to delegate different responsibilities in what looks like a coordinated strategy. Indeed, his speech is already prepared. Eriksson has recently heard from Axel A:son Liljencrantz about what Fredborg is planning to bring up and suggests some minor changes – in any case, it is Fredborg’s job to deliver a “känga” regarding the main issue, which roughly translates to “a boot” or “a kick”, something hard-hitting. Finally, the letter ends with “A warm welcome to Uppsala!”235 It is hard to say if this a mere error of remembrance or a deliberate attempt to seem less involved in the preparations of the tennis hall meeting (see the section “Fredborgs contradictions” in the final chapter), however, it matches Larsmos experience of reading Destination: Berlin - Fredborg does not deny the controversy surrounding him, but instead, he elegantly writhes past it.236 As the archival material shows, Fredborg did not simply join the cause last minute or even participate sporadically – he communicated closely with those who participated in preparations and was involved at a much

232 Fredborg, Destination: Berlin, 140. 233 Fredborg, 137. 234 Larsmo, Djävulssonaten. Ur det svenska hatets historia., 140–41. 235 Sven Eriksson-Ekbo, “Letter from Sven Eriksson,” February 15, 1939, Arvid Fredborg: Efterlämnade papper. 236 Larsmo, Djävulssonaten. Ur det svenska hatets historia., 27–28.

54 earlier stage than he lets on. It was likely no accident that the resolution just so happened to be written when he visited, and one must not forget that the Gästrike-Hälsingland Nations request for summoning the student gathering was proposed by Fredborg himself already on February 6. Though Fredborg was not present at the Gästrike-Hälsingland meeting, the fact that he still sent the motion from a distance indicates his knowledge of, and involvement in, the preparations even when geographically separated from them.237 In Fredborg’s correspondence with his family and friends in the untitled 1939-capsule, his constant travels back and forth between Uppsala and Stockholm are plain to see, as he visits on many occasions with short interludes. A few days after the tennis hall meeting, he excuses himself to his mother, who often sends him money and vice versa, since these trips have been quite expensive all in all. However, he writes that the trips are necessary and that he must under no circumstances lose touch with what is currently happening at Uppsala.238

Bollhusmötet

The student gathering was originally going to be held in the Uppsala university Aula but the student union's request to lease the locale was turned down, causing much disappointment among the initiators. Instead, the meeting was moved to a large tennis hall, Bollhuset, owned by the Uppsala student union. The poster for the meeting read like this:

“Uppsala students are called in accordance with the student union's statutes chap. 1 § 8 to the General Student Meeting on Friday, February 17, 1939, at 7.30 p.m. in the union's tennis hall - to discuss and take a position on the government's possible granting of entry, residence, and work permits in the country for a certain foreign, above all intellectual, workforce.”239

In Fredborg’s archive, there is a small printed yellow note which contains the compromise resolution and a motion. Part of the added sentence, “[…] and believe that Sweden should not withdraw its share in the relief work” is underlined, and the motion suggests that it should be omitted. The first reason is in accordance with the Fredborg circle’s argumentation in Ergo – it is not the student union's place to speak on the refugee question on a national level outside of student interests. The second reason is that the sentence is supposedly vague and easily misinterpreted, binding the student union to a certain political position in the future.240 It is unclear to this day who printed it, and according to a notice in the newspaper Uppsala Nya Tidning, members of the Nazi organization SSS could be seen distributing the yellow notes proposing this alternate resolution.241

237 “Protokoll Fört Vid Gästrike-Helsinge Nations Ordinarie Landskapsmöte, Måndagen d. 6 Febr. 1939.” 238 Arvid Fredborg, “Letter to Arvid Fredborg’s Mother,” February 22, 1939, Arvid Fredborg: Efterlämnade papper. 239 “Poster, ‘Allmän Studentsammankomst,’” 1939, Uppsala Studentkår Acta rörande studentsammankomsten den 17 februari 1939. 240 “Motion on Yellow Paper,” 1939, Arvid Fredborg: Efterlämnade papper. 241 “Studentkåresmötet i Flyktingfrågan,” Uppsala Nya Tidning, February 16, 1939, Uppsala Studentkår Acta rörande studentsammankomsten den 17 februari 1939.

55 If Fredborg has saved it as a curiosity, or if he had something to do with its printing, is not revealed by his Bollhusmötet-collection. It is however noteworthy that this version is found among his notes from the meeting itself. Along with this note, a version of the “official” compromise resolution is distributed by the attendees in the doorway, and finally, a third version appears – this is the original text suggested by the General Assembly without the sentence about aid, now distributed on the initiative of Birger Ryding.242 These three versions circulate among the roughly 1 500 attendees, creating confusion. More than anything, this took the left opposition by surprise, as they had not expected the Fredborg circle (or “Heimdalites” as they called them) to oppose a compromise resolution that they themselves had signed.243 Yet this is exactly what happened, and whether by chance or deliberation, the strategy was very effective. First, the broad consensus around the compromise resolution, just like Sven Eriksson predicted, attracted broad interest and signaled that whatever would be decided at Bollhusmötet had the entire student population behind it. Then, because of confusion about the resolution, aggressive rhetoric as well as fatigue from the long-winded debate that led to about 600 students leaving before the vote, the Ryding resolution that was identical to the General Assembly- version won the vote with the figures 548-349, yet with the perception that the majority of Uppsala students supported it.244 At this time, the student population at Uppsala university was around 3500.

The arguments examined

This section will look at the speeches held by the Fredborg circle at the tennis hall meeting and account for their ideological content. The relevant oppositional speeches will first be briefly summed up since although they may be interesting in their own right and provide context, they are not subject of the investigation at hand – the primary concern is the opinions and ideology expressed by those who orchestrated the event, the Fredborg circle. The speeches are found in the Uppsala student Union archive collection about Bollhusmötet,245 while additional material concerning Fredborgs participation is found in his archive. The social democrats, liberals, and Christian groups mostly argue from the same position. Erik Sandberg (the Free Christian Student Association) defends his view that immigration is not a zero- sum game and also criticizes the slippery slope argument and the speculations about the admittance of massive numbers of Jewish refugees. Anti-Nazi Gösta Lindskog emphasizes the necessity to preserve the integrity of the student union regarding this sensitive matter, probably referring to the

242 Larsmo, Djävulssonaten. Ur det svenska hatets historia., 65. 243 Larsmo, 60. 244 Larsmo, 84–85. 245 “4. Protokoll Från Sammankomsten Med Talarnas Anföranden.,” February 17, 1939, Uppsala Studentkår Acta rörande studentsammankomsten den 17 februari 1939.

56 treatment of Jews in Germany. Student Karin Westman asks the congregation to consider Sweden’s international reputation and argues that Jewish refugees can assimilate and become excellent Swedish citizens. Tore Tallroth (Verdandi) argues that the fear of mass admittance of refugees is excessive and vice-chairperson of Laboremus Ragnar Eriksson accuses those who speculate about such unplausible scenarios of , race hatred, and intolerance. Björn Sandberg, also from Laboremus, argues that both suggested resolutions go beyond mere student interest and are political, thus contradicting the argument that there is a non-political resolution and a political one. Erik Ljungblom, from Sveriges studerande ungdoms helnykterhetsförbund (“the Temperance Association of Sweden’s Student Youth”), also holds this view, and when he realizes how the vote is likely to go, he calls the students unworthy of the title “the pillars/bearers of culture”. He also disapproves of the “factual” arguments, citing British examples of the positive contributions to society made by the many refugees there. Theologian Gustav Öhman urges the attendees to go home and read the bible more carefully, so that they will realize who “the merciful son” calls his neighbor – in the present situation, Swedish interests must be put aside for the refugee’s sake, Öhman says. However, even though all these speakers frame the compromise proposition as contrary to their values and ideals, they stand behind it for various reasons, either as the most impartial, universal, and non-political option at hand or as the most humanitarian one. Few are willing to go beyond this forced compromise. Lennart Åkerlund, also from the Temperance Association of Sweden’s Student Youth, is among those few who want to scrap both resolutions and make no statement at all. Compare the hardships of an unemployed Swedish intellectual with a refugee, he says, and the question about who we owe our solidarity will be illuminated in a “factual” way. Yet, if any version has to be chosen, he says, it is the compromise resolution. Another group of speakers consists of the Nazi or national socialist organizations. Bengt-Olof Henning from SSS argues along with the already established logic of the work scarcity argument – this is not a political question as such, he says, but an interest-based labor issue. He urges the congregation to show solidarity with the domestic intellectuals whose future is threatened and criticizes the vagueness of the compromise resolution, arguing that it can be used by the “importers of refugees” and their accomplices. Jan-Erik Fänge, Nazi and member of the SSS, also contributes to the “fact-based” argumentation in shorter replies and retorts. Lars Malmgren, former board member of Upsala National Socialist Student Association246, now Uppsala SSS, wants to tone down the talk about “humanity”, “inhumanity” and “love of humans”, claiming to speak without any political intentions at all, as a “free member of the student union”. Lars Bucht, a member of the same association, briefly states his support for Ryding but would still have wanted a more forceful resolution.

246 Larsmo, Djävulssonaten. Ur det svenska hatets historia., 82.

57 There were also, finally, some entries that did not belong to any of the above groups or the Fredborg circle. There was a smaller group of representatives from the Medicinal association who did not explicitly express sympathies for any group, who spoke of their fear of job scarcity with added caveats about not being inhumane or having any ill will toward refugees. Other singular entries came from independent speaker Lars-Fritiof Hermodson who points out that the discussion revolves around a false dichotomy between letting in thousands of refugees or shutting down the border entirely, advocating for the compromise resolution. Theologian David Kulläng argues for Ryding’s proposition, citing Luther’s term “hard mercy”. The often misrepresented speech by Karl- Gustaf Hildebrand also stands on its own, as he is the only member of Heimdal who calls for more humanitarianism and stands behind the compromise resolution. It is now time to summarize the speeches made by the Fredborg circle. Thor Åke Leissner takes the stage first. Most of his arguments are a repetition of those found in the Ergo-articles, claiming that the admission of refugees would create new problems, in particular a dangerous political “irritation” among native intellectuals. He also raises concerns about those who use humanitarianism as a motive, organizations like Verdandi. He claims that these organizations are all part of an attempted and deliberate “processing” of public opinion, by way of the Swedish press. Who or what lies behind this “processing” he does not say. Next is Birger Ryding, representing the original version of the proposition that has been distributed among the participants to the surprise of the pro-refugee speakers. Once again, the danger of work scarcity is emphasized along with the risk of political irritation that will lead to students and intellectuals joining extremist parties. He points to the Nazi torchlight procession in Stockholm as an example, as well as the yellow notes distributed by an organization with an “oppositional attitude” – we all stand in front of the danger of political radicalization here tonight, Ryding claims. He argues that the presence of the yellow notes is proof that the unity of the compromise resolution was bought at too high a price and asks the congregation to vote for the original proposition. Arvid Fredborg’s speech stands out in stark contrast to the previous speakers and their attempts at maintaining an air of objectivity and non-political jargon, delivering a speech that is even more ideologically charged than that of the national socialists. This is the “känga” that the Fredborg circle agreed that Fredborg should deliver on their behalf. The first part of the speech is a forceful emphasis on the argument about work scarcity. Swedish students risk facing a dark future. For medical students, this is a question of life and death. And still, “strong forces” are in motion to bring over doctors, pharmacists, and dentists. The state has created an artificial demand for pharmacists and now plans to fill those positions with foreign labor. Under such circumstances, no one can blame people for being angry. The most serious part of this issue, Fredborg then states, is not the employment question but the race issue, arguing that it would be ridiculous to deny. Sweden does not yet have race problems and should not acquire such lightheartedly. There is not

58 the slightest reason to doubt, says Fredborg, that our country would suffer from divisive inner battles, and that such battles could result even from a “very moderate/abstinent” admittance of refugees. It is up to the Swedish intellectual youth to react strongly to uphold the quarantine order around our free and pure Swedish people, Fredborg states, borrowing words from Professor Johan Gunnar Andersson’s pamphlet Krigsfaran (“The War Danger”). So far, Fredborg claims, the government has not allowed any noteworthy reception of foreign intellectuals, but this is only thanks to a swift reaction to, and “storm of opinion” against, the planned admittance of the ten refugees, arguing that students must always react against even these smaller initiatives. He concludes by standing behind the Ryding-proposition, while he critiques the university for not leasing the Aula. Igor Holmstedt agrees that students have cause to worry, not least when “vast and influential circles” go as far as they dare to promote the admittance of refugees. These circles of power know that they are in a minority position, however, and fear that the public opinion might become too vocal. This is just the reason why students have gathered here tonight – to speak up. Holmstedt then brings a new argument to the debate, doubting how much danger these refugees are actually in. He believes that the refugees have not yet exhausted the possibility of staying in Germany. Besides, if they want to leave, plenty of transoceanic countries require intellectual labor. He finally mentions the race dimension - just like the need for emigration was created by race conflicts, so race conflict will follow in the wake of refugee admittance. Accepting these refugees would be like scooping up a cup out of a sea of misery and pouring it over Sweden. Like carriers of disease, these refugees would bring antisemitism with them here, concludes Holmstedt.

The race arguments interpreted

Many of the arguments made during the tennis hall meeting, and in preparation for it, were based on conceptions of race. Although the explicit nature of Fredborg’s speech is different from Ryding’s and Leissner’s tone, the contents are essentially the same ideas painted with a different brush. The idea of race conflict in the form of “divisive inner battles” correlates with the milder formulation of the same idea, that the refugees, being Jews, bring with them “political irritation” in the form of dangerous antisemitism. Holmstedt puts it more bluntly, characterizing Jews as carriers of the bacteria of antisemitism. The resulting Nazi organization is the secondary problem – the primary problem here is the Jews, who are also implied to be responsible for their own refugee status in this line of reasoning. To recall Helen Fein's antisemitic images, the Jew is here implicitly and explicitly characterized as a polluter of the Swedish political discourse, and the Fredborg circle thus makes use of the demonologic image. Another argument that is consistent throughout the argumentation of the Fredborg circle is the notion of manipulation and an unnamed manipulator. According to Leissner, someone is

59 “processing” public opinion using media outlets. Fredborg follows this idea but goes one step further and mentions an elaborate government scheme to partially replace the Swedish domestic workforce. In his typewritten version of his prepared speech, which is identical to the one he held, the words “forces in motion” are underlined in the sentence “Despite this, there are powerful forces in motion for bringing over doctors […]” What are these forces? The picture emerges of a shadowy, traitorous network of which organizations like Verdandi and Laborious are only the tip of the iceberg. Leissner seems to suggest that behind the supposed motives of “humanitarianism”, there are other powers at work. Although Jews are never explicitly mentioned, the paranoia of this argument is familiar from the antisemitic tradition of thought – some unnamed manipulator, Jewish or otherwise, is holding the strings, duping an entire nation into accepting a racially problematic element into its midst. This line of reasoning is reminiscent of August Skarin’s theories about a Jewish-Socialist conspiracy (see the section “Antisemitism in Sweden” of the subchapter “Antisemitism”). Knowingly or not, the Fredborg circle here presents arguments that paint a picture of the (suggested) Jew as a manipulator (the Judas-image) and as an underminer of authority (the Red Jew). The argumentation can arguably be classified as a form of doublespeak since the Fredborg circle communicates antisemitic theories while also avoiding explicit statements that could alienate the larger student population. Taken together with the victimhood narrative about the dark future for students, the fear of racial impurity, the centrality of the power of youth, the call to rise and fight back “forcefully”, as well as the preoccupation with community decline, it becomes plausible to categorize the arguments of the Fredborg circle as not only antisemitic but also containing recognizable fascist characteristics according to Payne’s typology. Fredborg has of course defended himself against all these claims, but there are serious discrepancies between his speech at the tennis hall meeting and his recollection of the events in his autobiography. Recalling what motives drove him in 1939, Fredborg writes that he did not want Sweden to “shut the gates”, only to be “cautious about letting refugees in”.247 This statement is somewhat difficult to interpret, yet if we read it charitably as a description of a moderate position on the question of admitting Jewish refugees, it becomes hard to explain his 1939 statement that even “very moderate” admittance of refugees could seriously damage Sweden. There is no such moderate positioning in Fredborg’s speech - instead, we find something resembling a battle cry for the youth to react swiftly and forcefully whenever a small number of refugees are at the gate, lest the powers that be use them as a battering ram to allow an unknown greater number of refugees to displace the Swedish workforce. However, when Fredborg summarizes his speech 45 years later, none of the above arguments are addressed. Instead, Fredborg emphasizes how his speech helped win the debate, how well

247 Fredborg, Destination: Berlin, 138.

60 organized his circle was and how the resolution led to a successful chain-effect of similar statements in Stockholm and Lund. In Lund, as Oredsson points out, the race theory was formulated in the resolution itself.248 Fredborg even defends the political views he and his friends expressed during the meeting, claiming that they were no less tolerant than the social democratic and liberal opponents were at the time, characterizing the outrage and condemnations that followed from the resolution as unfair and bitter. The only regret Fredborg expresses concerning the tennis hall meeting is that he “helped to overthrow a resolution due to a relatively small deviation from what was agreed” and that this behavior showcased a lack of “broad outlook” on his part.249 Yet here we risk falling for the same misunderstanding that permeated the 2000-debate, where it was often said that a “harmless” compromise resolution lost to a protection one. It is important to keep in mind that the original resolution also sought to bar Jewish refugees from entering Sweden and that the conflict was about an additional formulation meant to soften the blow of the core message. If these two resolutions are the extent of Freborg’s broad outlook, then it is not very broad even by 1939 standards. There was no refugee-friendly resolution, something that Fredborg’s opponents expressed numerous times during the debate. Some, like the already mentioned journalist and grandson of Fredborg Johan Tralau,250 have considered this regret about not voting for the compromise resolution as a general admittance of guilt or as an indication of an ideological change of heart. However, there is nothing to support this assumption. It needs to be stressed is that Fredborg and his friends did not simply participate in the tennis hall meeting and shift its outcome slightly – they actively facilitated it. By omitting the fact that Fredborg and his circle were the architects behind the student gathering and both resolutions, as well as smoothing over the overt propagandistic antisemitism and fascistic elements of their political expressions, the suggested narrative of redemption and regret once again falls apart under scrutiny, as does the notion that Fredborg was no more antisemitic than his opponents. Sverker Oredsson has also noted that Fredborg’s regret in this instance is idiosyncratic regarding the subject at hand.251 Fredborg further writes this about his conceptions of race in 1939: “Myself - and many others – considered Sweden’s relative racial homogeneity to be a value worth preserving.”252 As already elaborated on in the section “Propagandistic vs. peripheral antisemitism”, Fredborg is correct. There was probably almost no one who was entirely free of race ideology in 1939. However, this kind of blanket statement of ideological binaries is meaningless. If everyone was antisemitic, then the question simply changes shape – what kind of antisemites were Fredborg and his friends compared to others during his time? Their antisemitism was propagandistic to the point of orchestrating a large student gathering which they hoped would inspire a national movement to seriously restrict the admittance

248 Oredsson, Lunds universitet under andra världskriget: Motsättningar, debatter och hjälpinsatser, 66–67. 249 Fredborg, Destination: Berlin, 143. 250 Tralau, “Fredborg Skrev När Flocken Teg.” 251 Oredsson, Lunds universitet under andra världskriget: Motsättningar, debatter och hjälpinsatser, 63. 252 Fredborg, Destination: Berlin, 138.

61 of Jewish refugees in the face of persecution and war – they prioritized antisemitism over other ideological elements, making the Fredborg circle’s antisemitism at least an adjacent element in the Freedenian conception of ideology. Others did not – people like Erik Sandberg, of which there were many, fought the proposition and the rhetoric behind it from its conception to the tennis hall meeting. They failed, but they arguably did so at least in large part due to confusion and the strategical querulant behavior of the Fredborg circle. Their ideological position was not equal to that of Fredborg or his friends, even if Sandberg did not entirely refute race ideology as such. However, this insistence that there was no real opposition is just a repetition of an argument made by the Fredborg circle as well as the Nazi group back in 1939. Leissner and Holmstedt repeatedly claimed that the compromise resolution had been corrupted by a minority opposition, a special interest without any real representation, and that the addition of the “controversial” sentence was a falsification of the student opinion. In 1985, Fredborg holds on to this narrative, but there is not much evidence to support his version. This falsified notion of unity shall return in Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939 and The Swedish Line. In reality, the explanations of 1985 in Destination: Berlin are an attempt to retroactively justify the antisemitism and fascist impulses at the tennis hall meeting. Fredborg does not make excuses but instead tries to legitimize the position he held at the time by obscuring the central conflict of Bollhusmötet. If the primary sources are read carefully next to Destination: Berlin, it becomes clear that Fredborg never expresses any actual regrets about barring Jews from entering Sweden, whilst continuing to discredit his opponents of 1939. Large parts of his antisemitism are omitted, if not all of it, while he remains apologetic about his position at this time.

The job scarcity arguments interpreted

The meta-debate about why the refugees had to be barred from entering Sweden deserves to be interpreted on its own, which is why this section is dedicated specifically to that question. One of the most common lines of reasoning in the anti-refugee discourse of the debate was the argument about job scarcity for students, reducing the whole refugee crisis to a labor market conflict. However, this argument was rarely used was in isolation. Almost all who resorted to portraying the crisis as a labor issue also turned out to hold deep-seated ideological beliefs about race, especially the Nazi speakers who for obvious reasons should not be taken at their word when they claim to be purely “factual” or “unpolitical”. Following the debate, we can see how the work scarcity argument subtly changes shape into a race argument. In his Ergo article, Ryding writes that job scarcity as a socioeconomic phenomenon creates “irritation” among students, as a byproduct of admitting refugees – yet, when Holmstedt speaks toward the end of the meeting, this same “irritation” is now portrayed as being caused by the Jews themselves. The only speakers who plausibly argued only from the labor issue-standpoint were the representatives from the Medicinal

62 association, who spoke in a way that reflected a fear, warranted or not, of work scarcity. They were careful not to be associated with any political side of the debate, while arguably still leaning toward the Ryding-proposition. While it is true that such fears about job scarcity existed, it is also true that there was a de facto shortage of qualified labor in some sectors, including the pharmaceutical labor market. In an article in Dagens Nyheter, the chairperson of the Pharmaceutical Association, along with the chairperson of the Pharmacist society, agree that such a shortage exists, not least because of the recently lowered retirement age.253 A large part of the official reasoning of the Fredborg circle in the lead up to the tennis hall meeting, especially in the Ergo-debate and the motion distributed on the yellow notes, was based on the argument that the student union should not take part in a national political debate but only defend “objective” student rights, focusing on the factual issue of possible job scarcity. However, this reasoning stands in sharp contrast to other evidence suggesting that the Fredborg group had another goal – to start a national movement that would transcend student politics. This goal is stated most bluntly in the Nya Dagligt Allehanda article from February 13, “Where are the students?”, that Fredborg at the very least read, saved and borrowed arguments from (however, most likely somehow contributed to). In the article, the question is asked – “Shall the academic youth find the unifying parole in the refugee question that this country is waiting for?” 254 Oredsson believes that the main concern among the student population at large was probably the labor market issues, while the race theories were a concern among those fighting for the new resolution.255 This seems likely – the strictly “factual” arguments were probably a dishonest tactic employed by the Fredborg circle as well as the present Nazi organizations that worked well. The convergence of genuinely “unpolitical” students and propagandistic antisemites in a confusing and frantic setting led to the perception that Sweden’s students send a signal to the rest of the country – Sweden should not receive Jewish refugees. This was also the short-term goal of the Fredborg circle as well as the Nazis that participated in the gathering. However, already during the time of the debate, the architects of the tennis hall meeting continued to reiterate and develop their ideas through the Heimdal association and Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939.

The aftermath

On February 25, Fredborg receives another letter from Sven J. Larsson, apparently an old friend from his upbringing in Skara, and also a political ally. Larsson writes that he is trying to gather together something similar to Bollhusmötet in and would like to coordinate with Lund and Stockholm, asking if Fredborg has heard anything from these places yet. He writes that the

253 “Mer Folk Behövs, Säger Apotekare,” Dagens Nyheter, February 8, 1939, Uppsala Studentkår Acta rörande studentsammankomsten den 17 februari 1939. 254 “Var Finnas Studenterna?,” Nya Dagligt Allehanda, February 13, 1939, Arvid Fredborg: Efterlämnade papper. 255 Oredsson, Lunds universitet under andra världskriget: Motsättningar, debatter och hjälpinsatser, 66.

63 protests should occur simultaneously, like a powerful fireworks display, in order not to exhaust public opinion. He asks if Fredborg has any advice or opinions on organizing such a meeting and asks him to send useful newspaper articles as well as a copy of the Uppsala resolution. 256 Larsson is a little bit late, since a Stockholm meeting has already happened at the Karolinska Institute on February 22, yet the letter is interesting since it suggests that plans to coordinate these meetings existed. It also shows that people like Fredborg and his friends communicated and inspired each other across different universities and regions, even though there was never any noteworthy student gathering in Gothenburg, possibly due to the difficulties of co-organizing the many local schools there, as Larsson mentions in the letter.

Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939

This subchapter examines and interprets Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939 and its contents. After an introduction describing the Fredborg circle’s interactions with the Heimdal association, the articles in the review are summarized and described before being subjected to interpretation. The ideological expressions are placed in the larger context of theory and historical background, as well as the remaining source material. The investigation finds that Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939 continues to propagate the antisemitism of Bollhusmötet, but in a slightly different form - the antisemitism in Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939 relies less on the Jews as carriers of an abstract bacteria of social corruption but instead leans more heavily on a traditionally Swedish and Gothicist race mysticism with elements of race biology. It is also in the yearly review that the so-called Nordic thought is expressed clearly, the ambition to create a Nordic power bloc with a common military defense. This plan is expressed together with calls to self-sacrifice and a heavy emphasis on rearmament. The critique of Nazi Germany is based almost entirely on their geopolitical ambitions, and the social democrats are blamed for the bad relations between Sweden and Germany, relations that should be repaired as soon as possible. Some friction is found between the texts in the review, suggesting that the Fredborg circle had to compromise with other factions within Heimdal. However, this ambiguity, conscious or not, probably contributed to the success of the review among conventional right-wing profiles, who misinterpreted the review as a rejection of totalitarianism and national socialism.

The Heimdal association

In his memoirs, Fredborg describes how Heimdal became his political home and the basis of many important friendships and acquaintances.257 Fredborg writes that he and his friends felt they did

256 Sven J. Larsson, “Brev Från En Skolkamrat i Skara,” February 25, 1939, Arvid Fredborg: Efterlämnade papper. 257 Fredborg, Destination: Berlin, 42–43.

64 not belong in the SNU, although it is now known that this is untrue and that Fredborg was still a member in 1939 (see the subchapter “Who was Arvid Fredborg?”). Still, while probably not minding the domestic policies of the SNU, the growing sympathies for the German imperialist project within the organization was most likely off-putting to Fredborg and his friends, and they likely sought to express their patriotic political project elsewhere. They turned to the Heimdal association, a nationalist student organization founded in 1891. Fredborg and his friends Thor Åke Leissner and Erik Anners together planned a coup to take over the leadership of Heimdal in December 1937. According to Fredborg’s memoirs, they thought the organization had become “too ineffectual”. They knew that the election meetings attracted relatively few members, so they spoke to around 30 people in secrecy who were to suddenly appear at the meeting and shift the majority. The operation was successful, and the friend group set up the board in such a way that their political ally Olof Kaijser was elected chairman. 258 This way of coordinating actions and delegating different tasks within the friend group seemingly becomes the modus operandi for Fredborg and his political allies, as it was repeated on a grander scale to orchestrate the tennis hall meeting. Fredborg was assigned the role of editor for the yearly review, whose writers consisted of familiar names from Fredborg’s friendship circle as well as some other contributions. In 1985, Fredborg writes that Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939 can still be read with credit, also namedropping articles with jarring titles such as “The death of a people and the race question”.259 The yearly review was printed by Nya Dagligt Allehanda, who had many connections to Fredborg (see the section “Lead-up to the tennis hall meeting”).

Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939 examined

In the unsigned foreword, written by Holmstedt after “long discussions between the two of us”,260 Germany's imperial ambitions are discussed and are said to be a threat to Swedish nationalism. If Europe is dominated by Germany, smaller states will not be allowed to live on as independent nations - their nationalism, in turn, will be in jeopardy. While some might rightfully consider European unification as something desirable and good in itself, the prize of total subordination under another state is too high. Hence the author of the text calls for resistance.261 Sweden must assert its right to express its national particularity. However, this does not mean that the authors will abandon “the bearing ideas of the time”. These ideas do not include parliamentary democracy

258 Fredborg, 74–75. 259 Fredborg, 144–45. 260 Fredborg, 145–46. 261 Arvid Fredborg, ed., “En Vändpunkt För Svensk Nationalism?,” Heimdals Årsskrift 1939, 1939, 6–8.

65 which, according to the author, cannot be the endpoint of Sweden's historical development - an “inevitable upheaval” is the task at hand.262 Following the introduction comes a text by Arvid Fredborg called Sweden's Way, which begins as an appeal for major rearmament, a rearmament “to the extreme”. He laments the disarmament of 1925 and believes it to be a national disaster. Sweden should have learned by now the value of a strong military force, and Fredborg emphasizes how this is impossible without “purely personal sacrifice” among Sweden's citizens. However, it seems that the Swedish people lack the nationalistic sentiment and awareness that other nations rely on these situations, Fredborg writes.263 The article is also telling about Fredborg’s views about Hitler and Germany. The reason Germany should not be trusted is that Hitler has violated one of the fundamental principles of national socialism - “not to join foreign/alien peoples to the German empire.” The fact that this principle has been rejected in favor of German imperialism “has shaken all confidence in Germany and its leaders”. Fredborg argues this makes it “impossible for us to be friends of Germany”. This passage is the only one mentioned when he sums up the article in Destination: Berlin.264 However, Germany is not the only target of criticism of the article, not even the primary target. Fredborg is also deeply critical of the United Nations, and further critical of the Swedish government because he perceives them to be too slow to publicly recognize Franco’s regime in Spain. He calls for a stop to the “marvelous sensitivity to Downing Street” that Fredborg claims characterizes Swedish foreign policy.265 Here it is important to recall the geopolitical proxy arguments mentioned in the historical background – the negative view of London implicates a rejection of a certain European political project symbolized by London as its center. Fredborg’s rejection of Nazi Germany should not be read as an endorsement of the allied forces. If the article is read in its entirety, the fact that Sweden cannot be “friends of Germany” is framed as something unfortunate. Fredborg is deeply critical of the Swedish government for not sufficiently suppressing social-democratic journalists who have been engaging in agitation against Nazi Germany and mourns the good relations that existed between Sweden and Germany up until 1933. This agitation, according to Fredborg, is characterized by a “pathological rage” directed at the leading men of the new Germany and he believes that these acts of condemnation are gravely inappropriate.266 The confidence in Germany may have been shaken, but not destroyed it seems. The final part of the text is about the “population question”, and the current debate about falling birth rates in Sweden. Here, Fredborg presents an overarching two-step political agenda consisting of rearmament and eugenics. This strategy will appear again in greater detail in The Swedish Line, but here it is formulated clearly for the first time. "The people's struggle for their stock is waged as much with

262 Fredborg, 9. 263 Arvid Fredborg, “Sveriges Väg,” Heimdals Årsskrift 1939, 1939, 10–11; Fredborg, 17. 264 Fredborg, “Sveriges Väg,” 13; Fredborg, Destination: Berlin, 146. 265 Fredborg, “Sveriges Väg,” 14–15. 266 Fredborg, 12–13.

66 the cradle as with the sword," Fredborg writes, once again calling for “national renewal”. “The inherent life force of the people” is the only thing that can solve the problems at hand. Sweden is characterized as both technically and economically superior, and at the same time said to be the oldest kingdom in Europe, with roots disappearing “into the obscurity of the fairytale”, a sentiment very much similar to notions common in the Manhem associations, where political modernism is paired with ancient folklore. Once again, this should be read as an expression of race mysticism. This Swedish atavistic life force must be preserved and strengthened politically, and the reception of “alien races” would be a disaster, writes Fredborg, even if these foreigners come to Sweden as refugees.267 Fredborg writes in the review:

"And one should never believe that we, who set Sweden's racial unity as a cornerstone of our state-building, will ever cease to fight all tendencies to take in refugees of Jewish descent, or any other race foreign to us.”268

Fredborg then writes that the students of Uppsala and Lund have made their opinions known on this issue and urges the rest of society to take notice of this statement. He proposes a solution to this Jewish problem - international law should, following “our humanitarian traditions”, give the refugees a kind of start-up capital before they are sent to transoceanic countries. In , for example, the refugees might actually be of use.269 This argument was also stated by Holmstedt in his speech at the tennis hall meeting. These are the most pressing political issues, according to Fredborg - the foreign policy, military defense, the population question, and the race question. This is illuminating, as it shows that Fredborg sees the “race question” as something substantially different from the “population question”, as a problem in its own right. Later, in The Swedish Line pamphlet, the term “population question” starts encompassing both race and population decline, becoming a semi-euphemism which sometimes makes it difficult to differentiate the Fredborg circle’s views from the reform eugenics of Alva and Gunnar Myrdal. To conclude, Fredborg writes that action must be taken now - soon it will be too late. This is the last chance, the last stand, and we must be ready. In the final sentences, we find the seeds of The Swedish Line - Fredborg is convinced that he shares these views with a majority of the Swedish youth, no matter their political convictions. For the Swedish youth, he writes, party conventions are secondary. When the time comes for action, party lines shall be made irrelevant as the Swedish youth acts together.270

267 Fredborg, 17–18. 268 Fredborg, 18. 269 Fredborg, 18. 270 Fredborg, “Sveriges Väg.”

67 After Sweden’s Way comes the second article, the already mentioned “People's death and the race question, some reflections”, by anthropologist Bertil Lundman. Lundman uses exclamation marks generously in this fiery, raging call for race biology, Arianism, and eugenics. It is astounding that Fredborg even mentions this piece of race ideology (and does so positively) in an autobiography that is much preoccupied with framing himself as a member of the mainstream conservative movement. The text begins with a complaint about the schools, that they teach “teary-eyed humanitarianism” rather than heredity and religious values which are the “idealistic superstructure” of society. What is the base of this superstructure? Our foremost natural resource - the human material. This material is now being corrupted, Lundman claims. Christian weakness is partly to blame - the priests have no respect for the biological heritage. They betray “the Lutheran vocational idea”. Swedish authors are accused of skepticism and opportunism. Race is a reality, and the northern race is a reality, a reality that only stupidity will deny.271 The later part of the article is about how eugenics is as good a science as any other, followed by scientific arguments and history about the Nordic race, complete with differences between skulls, as well as other body measurements.272 Lundman concludes that it is beyond dispute that the Nordic race is psychologically and physically superior and will not tolerate any mixture with other races. The Nordic race possesses an “noble energy”. Other races, some of which he spends some time listing and characterizing, are naturally more decadent and weak - they naturally perished or were ruled over by “blonde” or “golden blonde” peoples, whose ruler instincts were always there in their blood.273 However, this biological race science is just a sheen that glazes over the idealistic core of Lundman’s race theory - the text then returns to the Gothicism and race mysticism that is more common among Fredborg’s circle. Everywhere, even in ancient China, there were blonde and blue-eyed people who were naturally adored and who ruled over other races while creating order - the Aryan race, which now remains only in a few Nordic and European countries.274 This is a real- life example of Berggren’s theory that race biology and race idealism were never at odds with each other but worked in a complementary fashion (see the subchapter “Race biology and eugenics”). In Lundman’s conclusion, the Aryan race is now jeopardized by the return of lesser races, but also by urban life, which does not suit the Arian race but weakens it (especially due to the city nightlife and the “unnatural lighting”). Gypsies and half-gypsies, even though we may not perceive them as such, have climbed to the social ladder to a very high degree in these milieus, a testament to their unnaturalness.275 Even a slight influence of Gypsy blood can have a corrupting effect on the individual's moral and intellectual qualities. These anti-urban sentiments can easily be

271 Bertil Lundman, “Folkdöd Och Rasfråga, Några Reflektioner,” Heimdals Årsskrift 1939, 1939, 20–22. 272 Lundman, 23. 273 Lundman, 24. 274 Lundman, 24–25. 275 Lundman, 27.

68 recognized from the antisemitic peasant romanticism that found its most profound expression in the Farmer’s League, but also in the Manhem association and now in Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939. Next are a couple of texts about the military by Louis Campanello, Bertil Sylwan, Dag Bergman, Erik Anners, and Erland Bernström, which all focus on rearmament, as well as the function of the military as a place where youth are fostered into men, and an institution that is largely beneficial also in times of peace. There are many calls for self-sacrifice, and hurry - what has to be done must happen now, and fast. “Who will be the strong man” to make this happen?276 Mostly though, these texts examine and review every part of the Swedish military defense, their history, and their possible future, suggested tactics and strategies, explanations of technology, and so on. At the midpoint of the yearly review, Fredborg writes another text that is largely an analysis of the new division between the axis and the allies. Each country and its natural resources, military strength, strategic position, foreign policy, and much more, are discussed, however, these speculations carry little weight for this analysis. Fredborg does not have much faith in Britain’s or the USA’s ability to cope with Germany. He reiterates his point about Germany having broken an important principle in national socialism – they have incorporated hostile-minded peoples into Germany and initiated an imperialist policy seeking to dominate Europe, and this is what has consumed people's trust in Hitler. Fredborg does not seem to find national socialism or the organization of a people according to race objectionable as such but instead opposes the unnatural incorporation of people who are alien to Germany into their Reich.277 The two following texts, written by Tord Wickbom and Ingemar Niklasson also mostly consist of speculations and analysis concerning mostly technical aspects of the Swedish defense, military, and strategic position. However, some ideological findings can be made in these writings also - Wickbom writes that in a situation where states can no longer stand-alone, “the Nordic thought” might have become a real political alternative. The Nordic thought, the long-standing idea among the Fredborg circle that the Nordic countries should unite and create a nationalist power bloc that can rival, or at least hold its own against, Nazi Germany. However, this is not only a pragmatic policy wish - as Fredborg writes in Destination: Berlin and later in The Swedish Line, the Nordic thought would be a realization of a natural tendency for the Nordic people, and a natural utilization of the “living space” that they inhabit.278 Wickbom writes that Swedish-Finnish interests should be strengthened further through discussions about Åland and military support. Wickbom's thoughts about Norway are interesting because they shed light on how the Fredborg-group viewed Norway in relation to the Nordic idea before the invasion, while Fredborg’s writing on the matter in The Swedish Line discusses Norway and Nordic unity after the German occupation. Norway is here seen as a nation that has

276 Bertil Sylwan, “Försvarsfrågan - Armén,” Heimdals Årsskrift 1939, 1939, 42. 277 Arvid Fredborg, “Europa i April 1939,” Heimdals Årsskrift 1939, 1939, 73–87. 278 Tord Wickbom, “Sveriges Utrikespolitik,” Heimdals Årsskrift 1939, 1939, 95–96.

69 unfortunately turned its eyes to the west, relying heavily on England for support - once again, skepticism is expressed towards the allied parts of Europe. However, Wickbom continues, during the intensified military conflicts of 1940, Norway, a young nation, might want an ally closer to their borders able to offer them military protection. A common Swedish-Norwegian coastal defense is described as a reasonable short-term goal.279 Denmark is said not to be a Nordic country, an affiliation they have abandoned – this is probably a reference to the non-aggression pact between Denmark and Germany.280 However unlikely, it is still desirable to bring them back into the Nordic fold. In Ingmar Niklasson’s text about Finland, he speculates about where Finland will turn, or rather, which country it will turn to when danger comes. Maybe Sweden’s recent militarization will convince the Finnish that Sweden’s “degeneration” has ended and thus strengthen the bond between the neighboring countries. Niklasson also writes that it would be a disaster if Finland turned eastward and that the Swedish folk tribe in Finland must be protected.281 The article about Britain by Olof Kaijser is the least ideological of them all - it is simply a quite accurate analysis of Britain and the British empire during this time.282 Sixten Björkbloms piece on Franco's Spain is also a quite unconditional and balanced review of Spain after the civil war.283 John Björkhem writes an article about the troublesome separation of science and ethics, critical both of individualism and the anti-individualist sentiment of modernist ideologies and their mass meetings.284 It seems likely that even during this time, the ideological focus of Heimdal was not exclusively aligned with the Fredborg-group, as was also evident at the tennis hall meeting when Heimdal-member Karl-Gustaf Hildebrand argued for the compromise resolution rather than Ryding's proposal. While many ideas typical of the Fredborg circle are found in Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939, ideas contradictory to those are also expressed. This is possibly one of the reasons why The Swedish Line exists - there the vision is more streamlined and coherent, and there the Fredborg-circle express their ideological project unhindered by the conventions of the form. In the essay about nationalist tendencies in by Carl-Olof Bergström, the recurring sacrificial ideology is stated very strongly. He quotes Tigerstedt: “Sacrifice is the condition of victory.”285 The admiration for Karl XII and his Carolines serves as an ideal and model for the future of Swedish warfare. However, he is critical of Adolf Hitler and national socialism as an ideology and praises how Swedish artists and writers have mostly rejected him, in stark contrast to how Lundman utters his distaste for Swedish writers. Bergström shows deep admiration for authors like Harry Martinsson.286 Bergström’s text is also interesting because it manifests the

279 Wickbom, 96–97. 280 Wickbom, 97. 281 Ingmar Niklasson, “Några Synpunkter På Finsk Inrikespolitik,” Heimdals Årsskrift 1939, 1939, 98–107. 282 Olof Kaijser, “Det Brittiska Imperiet Inför Dagens Kris,” Heimdals Årsskrift 1939, 1939, 107–18. 283 Sixten Björnblom, “Det Nya Spanien,” Heimdals Årsskrift 1939, 1939, 119–27. 284 John Björkhem, “Vetenskapens Självbesinning,” Heimdals Årsskrift 1939, 1939, 128–34. 285 Carl-Olof Bergström, “Nationalism i Nyare Svensk Litteratur,” Heimdals Årsskrift 1939, 1939, 139. 286 Bergström, 145–46.

70 connection between class and racism in modernity and the alternate popular emancipation through secularization of blue blood (see the section “Antisemitism and modernity”) - Bergström sees, through Swedish poet Verner von Heidenstam’s writings, how the shine from the king is spread over the innumerable comrades and co-fighters.287 Fredborg’s words about the roots of the Swedish essence stretching into the realm of fairytales come to mind. The article by Ulf Hård af Segerstad about nationalist painting is not very noteworthy.288 The tone in Rune Waldekranz's essay about political tendencies in cinema is quite analytical and detached.289 Erik Anners’ essay examines the then-contemporary economic situation in Sweden, and he is critical of the high degree of private savings among the Swedish population, as well as the low interest rate.290 The final essay is an anonymous semi-satire (credited to “Beppe”, in reality, Bertil Sylwan) which ironizes over some subject matters, among other things the accusations of fascism that now befall Uppsala students after the tennis hall meeting, and especially at the group surrounding Fredborg. The text is steeped in sarcasm in a way that makes it hard to decipher which parts are sincere and which are not, however it should be noted that Bollhusmötet is called “the only real opposition statement in this country for the last five years.”291

Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939 interpreted

As mentioned, many of the texts in Heimdal's yearly review are more practical and matter-of-fact than ideological. Considerations about military armament take up much space, and the grievance over the disarmament of 1925 is never understated – in 1985, Fredborg wrote that “to this day” he believed that the Swedish armament policy during the war was “criminal” and that the social democrats were to blame.292 However, the heavy focus on these defense elements reveals something else about the Fredborg circle ideology, or at least their political strategy. As previously stated, armament is the first leg of a two-step plan – first rearmament and consolidation of the Nordic powers, then “the population question”, a term that includes race eugenics in Fredborg’s conception. At this point, it is also noteworthy that almost always, in any context this group appears, Fredborg is the one to tackle the topic of race, refugees, and eugenics. Under Fredborg’s editorship, discussions about race are no longer hidden in the shadows, and the race elements of the Bollhusmöte-discussion are re- emphasized. Nowhere is there any mention of the “factual” question of a labor shortage – the student protests in Uppsala, Stockholm, and Lund are here retroactively framed primarily and exclusively as a stand against the reception of Jewish refugees to protect the Nordic race.

287 Bergström, 137. 288 Ulf Hård af Segerstd, “Nationellt Måleri,” Heimdals Årsskrift 1939, 1939, 148–56. 289 Rune Waldekranz, “Politisk Tendens i Filmen,” Heimdals Årsskrift 1939, 1939, 157–66. 290 Stig Radhe, “Sparande Och Penningvärde, Några Reflexioner,” Heimdals Årsskrift 1939, 1939, 167–80. 291 Bertil Sylwan, “Det Okända Uppsala,” Heimdals Årsskrift 1939, 1939, 184. 292 Fredborg, Destination: Berlin, 153.

71 The nature of the race ideology and antisemitism also becomes clearer in the yearly review. Fredborg and his friends express antisemitism through race mysticism and national romanticism, with race biology employed as a “scientific” argument for the reality of an ancient Nordic essence, an essence that is threatened by even the slightest impurity. This has all been hinted at before in the speeches held at the tennis hall meeting, but here it is expressed with much more clarity – not least through the placement of Lundman’s seething article about race so early in the review. A new facet of antisemitism being expressed in Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939 is the connection between Jewishness and decadent urban life, employing the image of the Lecherous Jew by implying that the Aryan race risks contamination via a dangerous seduction into a lifestyle that will weaken and destroy it. There is arguably an implicit connection between this image of Jewishness and Fredborg’s fears about the politics of individualist well-being and self-fulfillment, revealing a similarity between the Fredborg circle’s worldview and the paranoid antisemitism of the agrarian movement. Fredborg is straightforward about his past and enduring beliefs about race in his 1985 autobiography. He writes that his belief, then and in the decades following, has been that Sweden and the Nordic countries should be careful about adding “alien elements” to its people. Fredborg is however vague about whether he sees the issue as primarily social or based on blood and heritage, mentioning that he has both Finnish and Walloon blood in his veins while also adding a caveat - race was thought about differently back in 1939 compared to 1985. What he and his friends meant back then was simply “people” or perhaps “nationality”. Besides, Fredborg continues, Swedish people have never been able to treat foreigners “in the right way”.293 Instead of pondering over how to interpret these paradoxical statements, we can see the connection between race and blood through the inclusion of Lundmans text alone, the ideological contents of which do not reflect Fredborg’s retroactive reformulation of “race” into simply “people”. It is also important to consider the political circumstances of 1939 – the overwhelming majority of Swedish people did see race as an absolute reality, this is true. However, with the risk of being repetitive, not all people propagated this belief in the way Fredborg and his friends did. Race was, for most Swedish people, peripheral – it was a belief that was secondary to other concerns, a belief that changed when social, economic, and political circumstances changed. However, Fredborg stands out even in his circle as a constant champion of race all through the three ideological expressions under investigation in this study. This tendency is becoming increasingly hard to explain, except by assuming that antisemitism is an adjacent or core ideological element in Fredborg’s thought. Or as Fredborg states in the text, “a cornerstone” of his thinking. The description of Fredborgs views in Destination: Berlin is simply not truthful.

293 Fredborg, 139.

72 A new idea that is found in Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939 is sometimes referred to as the Nordic thought, expressed in those terms by Fredborg’s friend Tord Wickbom and spoken about implicitly by Fredborg in Sweden’s Way. This is the idea of a nationalistic Nordic power bloc independent of both London and Berlin. In Destination: Berlin, when discussing his supposedly changing ideations about race and foreigners, he writes that he does not see Norway and Finland as alien to Sweden and each other because of a long tradition of coexistence and cooperation.294 In 1985, Fredborg speaks at length about his growing fears of a German invasion during the 1930s and 1940s, a fear that grew along with Fredborg’s focus on Swedish armament.295 However, when examining the actual yearly review, this fear is not really about an aversion to fascism, but the threat of a German form of fascism hindering the birth of a specific Nordic form of fascism. The critique of Nazism in Heimdal's Yearly Review 1939 is over and over again connected to Germany's imperialistic ambitions. Apart from Bergström’s text about nationalist literature, national socialism is not subject to critique – rather, it is Nazi Germany’s deviation from the principles of national socialism that is being criticized. Yet, how could it have been otherwise – keep in mind that Fredborg was at this point aware of co-author and contributor Igor Holmstedt’s national socialist sympathies, something that precludes any substantial critique against national socialism as such. The skepticism expressed towards the west, London and the USA should also not be forgotten in the context of the geopolitical discussions. This text is first and foremost a call for Nordic independence, against all great powers. This is also confirmed by Fredborg himself in an opinion piece published in Nya Dagligt Allenahanda after the publication of the review.296 Seemingly annoyed with the interpretation of Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939 as anti-German, he writes that many readers have missed the fact that he and his co-authors sharply reject any ideological influence on Swedish foreign policy, and that this rejection extends to the western powers to the same extent. Too long have we been blind to the realities behind the masterly rhetoric of empty phrases, and too often have we let ourselves be affected by propaganda under the guise of “democracy”, he writes, putting quotation marks around the word “democracy”. London should not count on Sweden as their allies, he continues, and the moral assessment of the great powers by “party lines” needs to stop. He also writes that many readers have failed to understand that Heimdal represents a nationalist opposition, fundamentally distinct from all other political movements represented in parliament. According to Fredborg, Heimdal are fundamentally opposed to every aspect of the Swedish political system - it is all unsustainable and represents an inertia that is on its way out. He has no faith in the right-wing opposition, putting quotation marks around the word “opposition”

294 Fredborg, 138–39. 295 Fredborg, 149–51. 296 Arvid Fredborg, “Svensk Nationalism under Debatt,” Nya Dagligt Allehanda, May 1939, Arvid Fredborg: Efterlämnade papper.

73 - there is no real difference between the social democratic government and the conservatives, he writes. He calls for a capable and ruthless “Riks-government” with the willpower to enact a necessary “national renewal”. It hardly needs to be stated that this article blatantly contradicts Fredborg's later framing of The Swedish Line as primarily critical of Nazism. It could be argued that Fredborg’s anger over the social democratic critique of Germany, that in his mind ruined Sweden’s and Germany’s good relations, is an expression of the slogan he uses to describe his preferred policy during the 1930s, that Sweden should simply “arm up and shut up”. That is, Sweden should display total moral neutrality toward Germany and focus exclusively on armament.297 However, this silence in the face of powers with far greater military capabilities than Sweden is selective – during 1940 Fredborg was a political activist who campaigned actively for the end of in the face of the Winter War between the Soviet Union and Finland.298 Once again, this should be interpreted as a geopolitical proxy argument that betrays deeper ideological impulses – the readiness to stand down in the face of German threats paired with the active propagation of military conflict with the Soviet Union indicates that the Fredborg circle does not advocate neutrality, but rather displays a tolerance toward Germany. Indeed, Swedish neutrality politics during this time were also, in practice, pro-German, but in Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939’ neutrality is selective. Later, in The Swedish Line, the relative tolerance of the occupation of Norway becomes even clearer (see the section “The Swedish Line examined”). As for the Nordic thought, the political project presented through Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939 has many fascist signifiers – anti-liberalism and anti-communism is communicated, anti- conservatism is found in Lundmans text, the creation of a nationalist state based on traditionalist (in this case ancient) principles is clearly stated in Fredborg’s writing, the general positivity toward war through the highly emphasized praise of self-sacrifice through the military, the expansion or reformulation of Swedish territory into a Nordic power, and the strong emphasis of the power of youth along with the reformulation of all political conflicts into a generational conflict. However, there is also some ideological friction within the yearly review to contradict the fascist elements – in the unsigned introductory text (according to Fredborg written by Holmstedt) it is stated that the nationalism of the continental states cannot be accepted as the way forward for Swedish nationalism and that the Swedish humanitarian tradition cannot be combined with a totalitarian political system. Individuals, as well as nations, should get their due in Swedish nationalism, according to this text. While many other statements in the later articles directly contradict these aims (and to be sure, it is directly followed with a caveat that rejects the current democratic system) this paragraph should not be ignored. It is further evidence that Heimdal, while being a vehicle for the Fredborg group, might also have represented other political ideas during this time. Are these arguments really Holmstedt’s own opinions? The expressions mentioned are

297 Fredborg, Destination: Berlin, 143; Fredborg, 135–36. 298 Fredborg, Destination: Berlin, 160.

74 far removed from the national socialism of his earlier letters to Fredborg. Was this text negotiated by the editorial staff as a whole, or is it subject to some other influence? There is no evidence to be found among the source material, so only speculation is possible at this point. Yet, however it came about, this ambiguity probably helped the Fredborg circle to move closer in the direction of the mainstream right-wing movement, even though this might initially have irritated Fredborg. When conservative editor in chief of Örebro Dagblad, Ernst Georg Rosén, read the above paragraph, he was understandably appreciative of the sentiments and saw them as a representation of the entirety of Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939, so much so that he wrote a letter to Fredborg to express his enthusiasm. Without grasping the underlying totalitarian elements in conflict with these initial anti-totalitarian statements, he praised the yearly review in an editorial piece. Interestingly, Fredborg then takes the headline from Rosén’s text, “The Swedish Line”, and gives that name to the group's next project, which turned out to be their most overt expression of fascist ideology to date (see “The Swedish Line interpreted”). Despite being annoyed by the misreading of Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939, Fredborg used this misunderstanding to further his agenda. This occasional vagueness and somewhat contradictory nature of Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939, and its de-facto deployment of mainstream right-wing sentiments in the service of more radical ideology, could very well be seen as an expression of differentialism, a common form of far-right euphemism. According to political theorist Robert Griffin (see “Theoretical perspectives”), this is when something is made to appear as a liberal-sounding sentiment when it is actually a sanitized cluster of racist ideas connecting people to the soil they supposedly originate from, expressing ethnic purity in terms of identity and culture.299 That Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939 contains fascist elements under its pragmatic presentation should be obvious to anyone who flips past the introduction – yet, the review was met with much appreciation in the right-wing press. Svenska Dagbladet writes that the authors are owed our thanks because they are concerned for Swedish independence and freedom.300 They continue that it is evident Heimdal has chosen a different path after their break with the SNU in 1933 – of course, seemingly unaware of the fact that Heimdal is currently controlled by active members of the SNU. Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939 effectively acts as a trojan horse, sheltering the Fredborg circle under the guise of a moderate position, giving them a platform to propagate the very same radical ideology that was shunned by the mainstream conservative movement years ago. They would employ this strategy through The Swedish Line in a much more deliberate, and also successful, attempt at entryism into the conventional conservative milieu.

299 Griffin, “‘Lingua Quarti Imperii’: The Euphemistic Tradition of the Extreme Right,” 51. 300 “Idéernas Kungsådra,” Svenska Dagbladet, May 7, 1939, Arvid Fredborg: Efterlämnade papper.

75 The Swedish Line

This subchapter examines and interprets the political pamphlet Den Svenska linjen (“The Swedish Line”) that was published by members of Heimdal together with the Stockholm based organization Swedish Youth in 1940, as they entered into Högerns riksorganisation (“the Right-Wing National Association”), formerly the General Electoral League, AVF. After an introduction that presents the origins of the pamphlet, its arguments are then examined and interpreted. The pamphlet presents a political project that aims to mobilize the youth to create a cross-political nationalist force which would then abolish the current political system to create a militarized and integrated corporatist state. This upheaval would then be followed by an internal eugenics program to stop the reproduction of ”inferior elements” and a military expansionist policy that will establish Sweden as the leader of a Nordic power bloc as well as the central military power of northern Europe. The project can plausibly be defined as fascist, especially analyzed together with the ideological expressions of Bollhusmötet and Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939, projects to which The Swedish Line is ideologically and strategically connected. The pamphlet does not propose solutions to the temporary crisis of World War II, but rather solutions to an imagined thousand-year-old problem of Sweden ignoring its ancestral call to greatness – the current problems are framed only as symptoms of the political decadence that has substituted this calling. The dissonance between conventional conservatism and the politics of The Swedish Line is remarkable, especially considering its anti-capitalist elements.

The origins of The Swedish Line

Financed by Swedish business and sent directly to Swedish conservative leaders, The Swedish Line was an attempt to break the isolation of the Fredborg circle. It was a successful attempt – it started a process that would end up opening the doors into the political mainstream. The question is, what did the Fredborg circle bring with them? On July 17 of 1940 Arvid Fredborg, Gunnar Unger and Thor Åke Leissner hands over a memorandum to Ivar Andersson of newspaper Svenska Dagbladet.301 The memorandum was then sent to the leaders of the Swedish conservative and right- wing parties. It stated that Heimdal in Uppsala and Swedish Youth, a similar organization in Stockholm, wanted to break their political isolation and offer their services to the Swedish right- wing parties in a practical way.302 According to his autobiography, the idea of The Swedish Line as a form of written statement developed through discussions between Fredborg and Ivar Andersson. Andersson would later hire Fredborg as a correspondent for the Svenska Dagbladet and it is hardly a coincidence that

301 Fredborg, Destination: Berlin, 168–69.d 302 Fredborg, 167.

76 Andersson also happened to be the former chairperson of the SNU – they first met when Andersson held a political lecture at Heimdal in 1934.303 Gunnar Unger met Fredborg back in 1937, together with Gunnar Biörck. Biörck and Unger were the leading figures of the Stockholm-based organization Swedish Youth and shared Fredborg’s general political outlook. They started socializing regularly after realizing they were likeminded.304 Biörck was also a vocal opponent against the reception of Jewish refugees – he was the chairman for the Medical Association at the Karolinska Institute University in Stockholm and was one of the driving forces behind the Stockholm student meeting of February 22 of 1939, where a resolution similar to that of Bollhusmötet was produced.305 In June of 1939, Fredborg, Holmstedt, and Wickbom attended a Nordic student conference together with Unger and Biörck, arguing as one about the importance of Nordic military cooperation.306 Together they also criticized democracy, individual freedom, and “living standards” as a political concept, and finally created quite a controversy by coming down hard on Denmark following their non-aggression pact with Germany.307 Their consensus was not entirely accidental, as Gunnar Biörck had already reached out to Fredborg on May 10 - Biörck, Unger, Fredborg, and Wickbom were already planning the distribution of a joint journal and an eventual organizational merger between Heimdal and Svensk Ungdom.308 In 1985, Fredborg himself describes his motivations behind The Swedish Line as a reaction to the political darkness of 1940, especially prompted by the invasion of Finland, but his circle also worried about the rhetoric levered at Germany by “western friendly” voices like Torgny Segerstedt – they wanted other voices to be heard.309 This is why a list of demands was attached to the memorandum in which they offered their services. The demand for “national renewal” is first on the list, second is a military union with Finland, and third the liberation of Norway through negotiations with Germany, given that Germany accepts and recognizes Swedish sovereignty. Among the other demands was a stronger right-wing social policy - “active social politics” for the creation of “strong individuals”. They also demanded the freedom to work for these goals independently within the right-wing movement, as well as maintaining the right to formulate new opinions and solutions to these issues. According to Fredborg, these demands were accepted without any reservation by the Right-Wing National Association.310 Within this new platform, the groups started working on a “patriotic

303 Fredborg, 166; Fredborg, 112. 304 Fredborg, Destination: Berlin, 70. 305 Svanberg and Tydén, Sverige Och Förintelsen: Debatt Och Dokument Om Europas Judar 1933-1945, 186. 306 Fredborg, Destination: Berlin, 150. 307 “Svenska Studentuttalanden Väcka Pinsam Uppmärksamhet i Köpenahmn,” Nya Dagligt Allehanda, June 25, 1939, Arvid Fredborg: Efterlämnade papper. 308 Fredborg, Destination: Berlin, 148–49; Gunnar Biörck, “Letter from Gunnar Biörck,” May 10, 1939, Arvid Fredborg: Efterlämnade papper. 309 Fredborg, Destination: Berlin, 165. 310 Fredborg, 167–68.

77 manifestation” in the form of a pamphlet, The Swedish Line. It was to be an appeal to the youth, based in large part on the memorandum that was handed over to the Swedish right.311 Ivar Andersson financed the pamphlet with the help of contributions from the business community, and the pamphlet was published at the turn of the month between August and September.312 Six authors are cited – Arvid Fredborg, history students Torvald T:son Höjer and Per G. Andreen, Thor Åke Leissner, Gunnar Unger and Per Gunnar Nordin from the Lund-faction of the SNU.313 Then there are 33 more signatures expressing their assent, among which we find more familiar names: Erik Anners, Louis Campanello, Igor Holmstedt, Axel A:son Liljencrantz, Stig Radhe, Bertil Sylwan, and Tord Wickbom to name a few. 314 Oredsson calls it “a conservative Credo”, while still noting the absence of critique against national socialism and overt race ideology.315 In retrospect, Fredborg himself is not as happy with The Swedish Line as he is with his other projects, describing some of the writings as “amateurish”, and calling his appeals to Germany “slightly pathetic”. He claims that this soft approach to Nazi Germany is a result of political caution.316 However, when Fredborg remembers being accused of antisemitism in a review of The Swedish Line by his former history teacher Bjarne Beckman he still rejects this critique in 1985. Beckman wrote in an opinion piece in Göteborgs Handels- och Sjöfartstidning that he remembered Fredborg’s antisemitic rhetoric during the tennis hall meeting and recognizes it again in The Swedish Line.317 Fredborg writes in his memoirs that Beckmans has always been an “imbalanced” person and praises his friend and co-author Torvald T:son Höjer for defending him through an opinion piece in Gothenburg’s Trade and Shipping magazine.318 Fredborg gives no credit to these accusations, and still does not consider his actions hereto to be antisemitic in any noteworthy way, nor worthy of anger or distress back in 1939-1940. In the aftermath of the 1940 election campaign, many parts of the Fredborg circle are recruited by various organizations of the conservative and right-wing milieu. Thor Åke Leissner is hired by the National Organization of the Right, while Arvid Fredborg and Bengt Lind are hired by the newspaper Svenska Dagbladet.319 Larsmo describes how Lessner, Fredborg, Anners, and Unger become frequent recipients of scholarships from the businessmen like Axel Ax:son Johnson, to conduct opinion formation and manage campaigns all through the twentieth century.320 Igor

311 Fredborg, 169. 312 Oredsson, Lunds universitet under andra världskriget: Motsättningar, debatter och hjälpinsatser, 86. 313 Oredsson, 86. 314 Arvid Fredborg et al., “Den Svenska Linjen,” 1940, Project Runeberg, http://runeberg.org/svlinjen/. 315 Oredsson, Lunds universitet under andra världskriget: Motsättningar, debatter och hjälpinsatser, 86. 316 Fredborg, Destination: Berlin, 171–73. 317 Bjarne Beckman, “Tystlåten Ungdom Sjunger Ut,” Göteborgs Handels- Och Sjöfartstidning, September 24, 1940, Arvid Fredborg: Efterlämnade papper. 318 Fredborg, Destination: Berlin, 174. 319 Fredborg, 175. 320 Larsmo, Djävulssonaten. Ur det svenska hatets historia., 112–13.

78 Homstedt becomes a municipal politician and goes on to work as an official in the chancellery of the Swedish Right-wing party.321 For more information on where the individuals of the Fredborg circle went after 1940, see the section “Who were Arvid Fredborg’s friends?”. In 1941, The Swedish Line becomes a de facto organization, founded in Gästrike-Hälsningland Nation in Uppsala.322 The organization had about 90 members, among who most were academics or military men. According to Fredborg, it was supposed to function as “a conservative resistance organization” against a potential German invasion. In 1942, Thor Åke Leissner becomes the first chairperson of the Free Moderate Student Association and starts their still existing journal Swedish Line, named after the pamphlet.323

The Swedish Line examined

This section summarizes and examines the contents of The Swedish Line. The first segment in the pamphlet is titled To the Swedish Youth and opens by stating that Sweden is threatened by the surrounding powers. However, after reading Fredborg’s supposed motivations behind The Swedish Line, one might be surprised to find that the current “political darkness” is not framed as the primary problem – the current troubles are a result of the fact that Sweden has suffered one hundred years of self-inflicted insignificance, resulting from a materialist obsession with well-being. Sweden must now rise to its historical task of uniting with the other Nordic countries to create a bulwark against the east, and it must do so by rejecting all political teachings that are currently fashionable, the text argues. In order not to be led astray, Sweden must seek the answers in its traditions and past, the national heritage left to us by 2 000 years of unbroken Swedish history – there Sweden will find its direction, the Swedish line. Only if Sweden enters this path is it deserving of continued existence. All internal political divides must now be set aside to finally realize this calling that has been rejected for hundreds of years.324 The article is signed by all the authors of the pamphlet, while the other texts lack signature. The focus continues to drift away from the current events, as the opening sentences of the next text, A look back at Sweden's foreign policy, argues that Sweden's troubles run much deeper than the current wartime situation. The text begins as a harsh critique of the 1925 disarmament, characterizing it as the “spirit of petty Swedishness”. Following some reflections on the German and Soviet consolidation of power as well as a condemnation of the social-democratic and liberal critique of Germany, comes a lengthy portion about the invasion of Finland. The authors argue that Sweden’s weak armament might have contributed to the Soviet invasion and laments the

321 Larsmo, 113–14. 322 Fredborg, Destination: Berlin, 178–79. 323 Fredborg, 179; Larsmo, Djävulssonaten. Ur det svenska hatets historia., 113–14. 324 Fredborg et al., “Den Svenska Linjen,” 1–2.

79 absence of Swedish military support in the Winter War. Norway is only mentioned briefly at the end of the article.325 The next part, Sweden's Situation and its Demands on Swedes deal with several topics. The first subsection, “National renewal”, begins describing Sweden as “the motherland”, a singular unit moving through history in which the current generation has a responsibility to past and future generations. All spiritual and material forces and powers, and all spirit of self-sacrifice, must now be mobilized for the realization of a national renewal of the Kingdom/Rike. This renewal will instill in all Swedes an acute sense of duty to the motherland, an awareness that has been missing for too long. In a ruthless process of self-testing, Sweden will root out all habitual thinking, laziness, indulgence, prosperity, and blind admiration for the powers that be, because, the authors write, only that people who want to live shall be able to survive the Ragnarök of the old Europe that we are now witnessing.326 The next subsection, “A Swedish Cultural Policy”, calls for the intensification of national propaganda that will take possession of all possible outlets, especially press, film, and radio. Older cultural forms, like school and church, are also significant in this project. All education, especially history and literature, must be characterized by a national objective that will teach students “the right understanding” of Sweden’s cultural heritage. In particular, the Swedish youth must be made to understand the toil and large amounts of blood that constitute the foundation of Swedish rule of law and freedom.327 The next section is titled “Struggle against corrosive forces” and begins with a call to dissolve the Swedish communist party. The authors also call for measures against some national socialist circles where “certain elements must be kept under control”. The authors however emphasize caution in this process – many among those “to the right of the right-wing” have an exceptional loyalty to Sweden and have stood by the nation in a time where, for example, the social democrats have denied the national values. National socialism as such is not seen as a problem, so long as it is geopolitically Swedish – the loyalty to Germany, or just defeatism as exemplified by politician Allan Vought, is however subject to control and disciplinary action.328 The final section of this text is called “Effectivization of Swedish Society”.329 This text is a euphemistic attack on democracy and calls for a “personal examination” of the Swedish state machinery, from the top to the bottom, both in government and institutional administration. The authors argue that democracy has slighted expertness and has failed to solve “the problem of quality”. The current situation is dangerous, and there is no place for incompetent or exhausted personal properties in the Swedish state. The text then goes on to argue for the importance of

325 Fredborg et al., 3–6. 326 Fredborg et al., 7. 327 Fredborg et al., 7–8. 328 Fredborg et al., 8–9. 329 Fredborg et al., 9.

80 strong personalities in leading positions. “The importance of personality should be obvious to all by now,” the authors write without specifying further, yet one cannot be blamed for recalling the “leading men of the new Germany” that Fredborg mentioned in Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939. Sweden’s weakness is connected to the lack of strong personalities and no country can afford to make use of those who belong among the “compliant personalities”. This line of thinking is a systematized version of a sentiment already expressed in Heimdals Yearly Review 1939, where Bertil Sylwan called for a “strong man” who can prime the nation for self-sacrifice and rearmament. The authors finally state an unconditional demand that the Swedish coalition government is replaced by a bold and determined Riks-government which is willing and capable of ruling with a steady hand. This is precisely what Fredborg argued in his opinion piece in Nya Dagligt Allehanda after the publication of Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939.330 Sweden’s Foreign Policy lays out the long-term goals of Swedish foreign policy – “a Nordic power bloc, Sweden-Finland-Norway, where our country would constitute the natural central power.”331 The authors write that it might seem bold to propose this under such dire consequences, referring to the situation in Norway and Finland. Yet, he writes, the current situation will not last forever. The article states that it is also Sweden’s historical mission, and the foremost task of our nation, to once again claim the centrality of power in northern Europe. Re-establishing a free Norway is mentioned briefly, but it is Finland that the authors are truly worried about – Finland’s freedom is Sweden’s first short- term foreign policy goal. The invasion of Finland is framed as a disaster, the Nazi occupation of Norway is portrayed as a nuisance. “Sweden and Germany” is a section of this text that Fredborg takes credit for in his autobiography.332 Here, writes that Sweden could offer Germany its voluntary cooperation and the two countries could coexist peacefully as long as Sweden’s sovereignty is respected. Even though some Swedes have reacted too strongly against German policies, cooperation is still possible. Besides, he writes, the Swedish neutrality politics have undoubtedly been of great value to Germany. It is both desirable and possible to mend the relations between the two countries and re-establish the Swedish bonds to Germany. Germany must also renounce any claim to Finland, as Finland and Sweden shall work intimately together to create the already mentioned “body of a new Norden” in the restoration of Norden as an independent political entity. Once again, the demands for Norwegian liberation are much more modest - here Fredborg displays an understanding attitude, writing that it cannot be expected that Germany would end the occupation during wartime. Maybe Sweden could work as an intermediary in a diplomatic attempt to secure a compromise that would benefit both parties, that is, both Germany and Norway. Denmark's integrity is only mentioned briefly, yet as The Swedish Line was published shortly before the occupation, that is

330 Fredborg, “Svensk Nationalism under Debatt.” 331 Fredborg et al., “Den Svenska Linjen,” 10. 332 Fredborg, Destination: Berlin, 170–71.

81 understandable. The area around Norden and the Baltic Sea is described as Sweden's “living space” (whereas the Swedish word for “living space” sounds very close to the German “lebensraum”) and Sweden thus has a natural claim to it that Germany must respect. This reasoning is practically a reiteration of the national socialist principle of not appropriating alien peoples into a nation where they do not belong.333 The text continues by detailing Sweden’s relationship with Russia and England. The case of Russia is described as simple, and the reasoning is concluded in a paragraph. If Russia respects the Moscow peace and evacuates the 7 500 Estonia-Swedes back to Sweden, Russia may conduct trade with Sweden for the economic benefit of both countries. If not, Sweden will fulfill its historical task of being a “northern guardian” and fight Russia alongside Finland in open military conflict. The supposed fear and caution of superpowers with imperialistic ambitions is nowhere to be found every time the Fredborg circle is dealing with the Soviet Union. In England’s case, it is mostly about a mutually beneficial economic exchange, along with a lament over the fact that Europe’s two great powers, England and Germany, are in conflict - a conflict that constitutes a danger for worldwide European hegemony. The chapter concludes with a mention of the importance for Sweden of transoceanic trade.334 The Nature and Position of the Swedish Armed Forces is a lengthy part of the pamphlet, which makes sense based on the Fredborg group’s enthusiasm for military policy. The authors propose to elevate military issues above parliamentary politics. The Swedish military defense must be total - civil society as a whole must participate in and be connected to it. This will require resources on an unprecedented scale, for example, incorporating the sciences – our engineers, chemists, and technicians have only begun to make their contribution to the military, the authors argue. Sweden should also introduce different forms of female military service. The text then returns to the “personal examinations” of previous chapters, proposing the sorting out of those individuals who do not measure up to their task – this will strengthen the now paper-focused and stale military bureaucracy, removing the “judiciary tendencies” from the defense. This plan for the Swedish military is not just a response to the current situation, but also an end in itself. The military is the visible manifestation of a people’s “life force”, and its honorary status as such is yet to be appreciated. This militarization is also a necessity for the Swedish re-establishing of itself as a Nordic central power. A peacetime organization of the military will look different, not in nature but extent – in the part called “The coming defense organization” the authors propose that the military organization could keep about 50% of its units during peacetime, including a permanent and professionalized home defense. The future defense organization must be built with total war in mind.335

333 Fredborg et al., “Den Svenska Linjen,” 11–12. 334 Fredborg et al., 12–13. 335 Fredborg et al., 14–18.

82 The next chapter is called The Population Question, and this issue is characterized as Sweden's most serious political problem. Reference is made to Alva and Gunnar Myrdal's famous writings on the subject. The population decline is already here, the authors write, and it must be handled with greater determination than what has so far been the case.336 However, the authors reject seeing the population problem as an economic issue alone, but rather view it as a cultural issue. The population decline would force Sweden to receive foreign labor, resulting in the Swedish people being mixed up with “alien elements”, something that will lead to the death of the swedes as a people, followed by foreign conquest and a complete “denationalization”. It is, according to the authors, a duty to our ancestors that we keep the Swedish folk tribe intact and protected from foreign blood. The text expresses disappointment with the writings of the Family Commission (a social democratic institution founded as a response to the population decline), as it prioritizes individualism and the striving towards happiness before the safeguarding of a Swedish nation and a Swedish folk tribe. The “life of the nation” is a paramount objective compared to the life of the individual. Only the national values have the potential to reignite the will to live among the Swedish people. 337 This article confirms what was already hinted at in Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939 – when the Fredborg circle speaks about the “population question” they fill the term with race ideology and nationalism. The question of race and the question of population decline is intimately bound together in their ideological conceptions, which is why they express disappointment with the Myrdals and their “reform eugenics”, which exclude race from the equation. During the next part, “Racial hygiene and immigration”, rhetoric recognizable from Bollhusmötet returns. There is, according to the authors, no reason to be discouraged by other countries' policies – Sweden must develop sound racial politics. The procreation of “inferior elements” is portrayed as a problem with possible connections to mental illness. Letting Jewish refugees and professionals stay in Sweden contributes to this problem and ignites the often mentioned “irritation” that the Swedish youth supposedly feels when it comes to this issue.338 Once again, the Jews are being portrayed as the “bringers of antisemitism”, as well as a eugenic risk factor. The authors also fear for the racial integrity of the already mentioned Swedes who have emigrated to Estonia or the USA. These should be brought home to Sweden swiftly, after a period of eugenic testing, supposedly to make sure they have not been mixed up with “inferior elements”339 – a suggestion more extreme than many demands made by Swedish Nazis. The argument about returning Swedish people from Estonia and the USA as part of a eugenics project is interesting because that goal connects with The Swedish Line-author Thor Åke Leissner’s argument

336 Fredborg et al., 19. 337 Fredborg et al., 21–22. 338 Fredborg et al., 23. 339 Fredborg et al., 24.

83 at Bollhusmötet when he stated that Swedish jobs should be reserved for Swedish intellectuals returning home from foreign countries, even if there is a current labor shortage on the market. Perhaps the most notable part of this pamphlet is the short chapter entitled Our Generation, the Last Which Can Solve the Population Question. It is worth quoting in its entirety.

“However, can you really influence a complicated process, like that which the population development constitutes? With Germany's example in front of our eyes, one dares answer yes. Everything depends on the will. That people, which wants to live, shall not die. It also seems like the present day offers us greater opportunities to bring about a decisive change than the 20s and 30s did, with their golden age of materialism and individualism. When the Swedish people's will to live in the face of the external threat has expressed itself in great sacrifices for the strengthening of the military defense - would not this will to live react also to the equally terrible threat of the decline of the population? But the turnaround must come soon if the damage is not to be incurable. Our generation is the last that can bring about change.”340

This part of the text lays bare the long-term goal and strategy of The Swedish Line, a strategy that was also expressed more loosely in Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939. First, the Swedish people’s life force is revigorated by a strengthening of the military forces, as well as the militarization of society as detailed in the chapter about the Swedish defense. Then, with the exterior threat shut out, the interior threat of racial impurity will be handled with the help of race eugenics, as well as the resettlement of Swedish people in Estonia and the USA. This will in turn give the Swedish people the power and will to re-establish Sweden as the central power of northern Europe and the capital state of a Nordic power bloc along with Norway, Finland, and possibly Denmark. Now both Sweden and Nazi Germany have gone through the “upheaval” or “Ragnarök” of old Europe, co- existing as novel forms of nationalist military states rooted in the atavistic essence of folkloric tradition. So far, The Swedish Line matches up with all facets of Payne’s fascist typology except one – corporatism, or a similar integrated economic system. Coincidentally, that is the subject of The Swedish Lines final chapter. In the chapter about economic politics titled The Economic and Social Questions, the authors write that the question of socialism versus capitalism is outdated - the population issue (that is, the race question) will dominate all economic and social life for the foreseeable future. National unity and forward-thinking have to be built on social harmony. The ideological struggles of yesterday will seem like nothing more than technical problems to a new generation - the authors want to discard the illusory left-right conflict altogether, opting for a combination of state and commercial solutions in service of the preservation and refinement of Swedish demographics. They write that while “no modern person” any longer believes in the right to private property, no one can deny the security and comfort that follow from ownership rights.341

340 Fredborg et al., 24. 341 Fredborg et al., 25.

84 However, Sweden’s domestic businesses must be freed from dependence on foreign products and materials, and the authors call for a reorganization of production geared toward domestic self- sufficiency.342 In the part titled “Effectivity and Community Spirit”, the authors wish for generous state subventions for companies that develop technology that benefit the nation, a risk-reduction that will help businesses bridge short sighted profit motives and tie them closer to the state to achieve effectiveness and well-being for the national community at large.343 These surprising claims clash with the conception of the Fredborg group as hesitant to all forms of socialist organization and/or state-owned enterprises. The pamphlet goes on to suggest that economic redistribution policy should be disconnected from party politics entirely, as workers and employers are just interest groups who have abused these questions for short-sighted gains - thus the pamphlet rejects the political narratives of both the political right and the political left, in favor of its own narrative. It is also a rejection of the interest-based view of society that conservatives were in the process of embracing (see the chapter “The conservative movement”). The suggested solution to these supposedly unsound power politics of workers versus employers is that both employment organizations and the trade unions must “slowly grow into the state life”.344 It is not unreasonable to assume that the authors intend for these organizations to be absorbed by the state as soon as possible, thus revealing The Swedish Line as a corporatist project. The purpose of this corporatist state structure is to make the folk community a “living reality”, by making all social groups in society subservient to the Swedish nation, a solidarity which will form, educate and reward its members. This community spirit will be idealistic, non-profit, and non-materialist. However, at the same time, the economic life of the nation shall be dictated by efficiency alone, or to be precise, “a pursuit of increased efficiency, uninhibited by dogmas”. Together with the militarization of state structures, we end up with a highly integrated, hierarchical society that functions as one single mechanism.345 In the closing chapter, The Responsibility of the Youth, a chapter still worth reading according to Fredborg in 1985346, the authors describe their belonging to the political right as secondary and almost incidental - they see the right-wing movement as the area where the struggle for nationalism most clearly represented. However, the choice of party and political sentiment according to the traditional (soon to be outdated if the authors are to be believed) parameters is of lesser importance. They advise the Swedish youth to join whatever party suits them, except for the communists, and work from within to realize a unity of youth and nationalism that will transcend the outdated party politics and transform society.347 Party boundaries should not prevent young people from acting

342 Fredborg et al., 26. 343 Fredborg et al., 28. 344 Fredborg et al., 25. 345 Fredborg et al., 26. 346 Fredborg, Destination: Berlin, 172. 347 Fredborg et al., “Den Svenska Linjen,” 29–30.

85 together on “their issues”. The authors demand a reduction of the voting age to 21 in response to the increasing so-called "old man-ification" that will result from the declining levels of childbirth. The target of this youth-driven change is the parliamentary system and voting system itself, as well as the Swedish constitution. The following changes must furthermore be inspired by “ancient tradition” and “the royal powers”. 348

The Swedish Line interpreted

The emphasis on youthful energy, and the fear of its loss, is present all through the Fredborg circle’s output, since they see it as an important driving force for the Swedish folk tribe and nation. This reformulation of political conflicts into generational conflicts, here and elsewhere in the ideological paper trail of Arvid Fredborg, is in all likelihood connected to the Fredborg circle’s constant tendency to deny or downplay the discord about the refugee question among the Swedish youth and student movement, framing their political opponents as a conspiring minority distorting the majority opinion. The post-political unity of youth is an important ideological belief of the group. The Fredborg circle is convinced that the Swedish youth has a singular nationalist interest, and other youth opinions thus become anomalies that must be explained in some other way. On its own, rejecting the left-right spectrum does not necessarily determine fascist ideology, neither does corporatism automatically imply fascism – for example, Catholic social teaching, the basis for much of the world’s Christian democracy and some of the foundational aspects of the , also tries to stand outside the modernist divide between socialism and capitalism by giving both workers and employers their due in terms of rights, privileges, and obligations and is sometimes characterized by a soft corporatist mentality. However, together with the other ideological components and plans for the social, economic, and political organization on display, the classification of The Swedish Line as a fascist project becomes very plausible. As already stated, Payne’s typology of model fascism should not be used as a checklist. Still, it is hard to deny that The Swedish Line mirrors Payne’s description of fascism fairly well. We have the vitalist/idealist philosophy, the integrated national economic structure, a positivity towards violence and war, the radical change is the nation’s relationship to other powers that involves expansion, the romanticized view of youth, and a call for a personal, authoritarian and charismatic leadership style. We arguably also find an authoritarian state that is not based on traditional principles – to be sure, The Swedish Line aims to preserve monarchy and traditionalism, but as a means onto itself. The state, as well as the youth movement, must be “inspired” by traditional values, but leaders and decision-makers will be chosen by other means of “personal examination”, based on their competence, charisma, and willingness to be ruthless (“use hard clutches” as the text states, in a Swedish expression that is untranslatable). It is reminiscent of Holmstedt’s

348 Fredborg et al., 30.

86 reasoning in his letter to Fredborg in 1935, where he differentiates between the tasks of monarchy and state. Besides, is also hard to fit the above-described policy program into either Scruton’s or Macintyre’s definitions of conservatism. Scruton’s “settlement” concept, the idea that individuals are rooted in a given context and that politics are preceded by community, is arguably expressed in The Swedish Line, but expressed to such lengths that “settlement” is too modest a word for it. Here, the “settlement” aspects of The Swedish Line threaten the important stability of the “we” it is trying to establish – an ancient calling is deeming the current form of Swedish life and tradition as unworthy of continued existence. This is a purely reactionary element, as the aim is not to achieve stability but rather to destabilize in order to reinvent, something much more in line with Herf’s conception of fascism – anti-modernism expressed as modernism. Conservatism, in Scruton’s view, is wholly incompatible with both reactionary and revolutionary elements. Likewise, the Macintyre conception of conservatism becomes very unlikely in this case. Macintyre defines conservatism as aiming to preserve an earlier variant of liberalism, which is completely unfitting in this case as the hardline corporatist economic system that The Swedish Line proposes is hostile to liberal core values - it aims to integrate industry into the state machinery. In his autobiography, Fredborg urges readers to view The Swedish Line in the context of the political upheavals of 1940. Yet, as already mentioned, The Swedish Line does not simply propose temporary solutions to a state of crisis, but permanent solutions to a problem that is portrayed as being hundreds, if not a thousand, years old. Over and over again, the pamphlet states that the current crisis is only a symptom of a deeper problem that Sweden has suffered for too long – Sweden has not followed its historical calling and has instead focused on internal concerns about the happiness and comfort of its citizens. The Fredborg circle makes a normative judgment of Sweden’s current form of existence – it is not worthy of survival. The Swedish Line does not aim to instill a crisis plan to preserve Sweden but aims to fundamentally change Swedish society at its core – and change it for good. The Swedish Line cannot simply be interpreted as a collection of wartime measures, since it does not address the war as the primary problem. The overarching strategy of The Swedish Line can also be interpreted as a form of early doublespeak, both in its intents and its purposes. The Fredborg circle is threatened with political irrelevance in the 1940s, as the National movement is descending into the worship of Germany while oppositional and Western-friendly voices like Torgny Segerstedt are being more heard. They must find new ways to keep up the momentum built by Bollhusmötet and Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939. In an article in Svenska Dagbladet where Fredborg gives a short statement, he says that the academic youth has hereto been careful to not associate with any political party to keep their political freedom, but the backside has been that the Swedish youth has not had any direct influence over Swedish politics (once again, Fredborg makes himself synonymous with “the Swedish youth”, as if there was no opposition or discord). Therefore, the Fredborg circle has been “forced to break

87 their isolation”.349 Although their ideology was inherently hostile to and parliamentarism, something that Fredborg himself exclaimed in frustration after the publication of Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939, they now made a conscious attempt to smuggle their specific Nordic fascist ideology into the liberal democratic political arena anyway, to change its foundations from within. However, it is remarkable how plain-spoken The Swedish Line is and is also remarkable how little they had to compromise with the Right-Wing National Association to get accepted into the party “without reservation”. How could The Swedish Line have been well received in these circles with an agenda that was completely antithetical to both conservative and liberal ideology? The dissonance between The Swedish Line and the increasingly democratic right is hard to explain, yet perhaps the answer lies in the dire historical circumstances of 1940. Up until the war, democracy had become gained more positive connotations, but during the war, this development was put on hold – radical democratic organizations were kept under watch by the Swedish Security Service, just like communist or Nazi organizations. Swedish newspapers and official authorities stopped using the word “democracy”.350 While the social climate of 1940 cannot explain away the ideological expressions of The Swedish Line, indeed, all political movements were hard-pressed by the situation Sweden found itself in. As previously stated, the drift of the AVF youth wing into pro-German national socialism along with the party’s inability to create a new political forum for conservative youth speaks of exhaustion and stagnancy in the wider right-wing circles that probably contributed to the choice of allowing the Fredborg circle, along with literal national socialist Igor Holmstedt, into their party. It is hardly surprising, in light of the SNU’s pro-Nazism, that the Swedish right- wing would be relieved to find a youth movement that was at least loyal to Sweden as a nation. The Fredborg circle was also obviously very capable and driven, and they were surely needed as agitators in the 1940-elections.351 A subheading of an article about the pamphlet in Svenska Dagbladet states “no one may neglect to vote in the election” next to a paraphrase from the pamphlet, “an appeal to the youth” – as if the contents of the pamphlet had anything to do with the upcoming election or even democracy. Yet, for the Swedish ring-wing, maybe the pamphlet had everything to do with the upcoming election. So much so that the contents of the pamphlet mattered less than the fact that they had “converted” a group of academic intellectuals. Recalling the media praise of Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939, many conservatives likely choose to believe that Fredborg and his friends had an agenda that matched up with theirs. It is also likely that far-right figures like Ivar Andersson acted as a connecting point between more radical movements and the conventional right, using the ideological magnetism between conservatism and fascism, their common “nation state-ism”, as a bridge between the two milieus. As an article in the pamphlet states, The Swedish Line is not necessarily a right-wing project – the

349 “Den Svenska Linjen,” Svenska Dagbladet, September 1, 1940, Arvid Fredborg: Efterlämnade papper. 350 Oredsson, Lunds universitet under andra världskriget: Motsättningar, debatter och hjälpinsatser, 214–16. 351 Fredborg, Destination: Berlin, 174.

88 authors have only identified the political right as an arena fit for their national renewal352 There is an eschatology on display in The Swedish Line – a sort of adapt-or-die mentality, where Sweden must change or perish. The democratic system is among the things that must be done away with. In the “Ragnarök” that The Swedish Line ominously sees drawing near, Sweden as we all know it must be abolished by the Swedish people themselves or other powers will do it for us. This urgent plan laid out in The Swedish Line, that the Swedish youth shall together enter parliamentary politics and restructure the state, never came to fruition since the Fredborg circle’s political prognosis was obviously wrong. Still, this does not mean the authors of The Swedish Line did not try to achieve these goals, and the result is that the Swedish conservative movement absorbed fascist elements into its midst. In the articles and discussions about The Swedish Line after publication, the anti-German sentiments were the most discussed and praised. This praise, it seems, was in large part a result of pro-Nazi newspaper Aftonbladet’s dislike of The Swedish Line – in Dagens Nyheter’s review, the anger of Aftonbladet is the focal point and source of praise for the pamphlet.353 However, there is a hesitance even in the positive reviews – Svenska Dagbladet, while being overall appreciative, calls the writing “strange” and occasionally sub-par regarding composition and content. However, they write that this could be the result of the pamphlet being penned by multiple authors.354 The local newspaper Upsala is also initially hesitant, likewise calling the pamphlet “strange”, arguing that the ecstatic fanfares from the right-wing about this new addition to the election propaganda should be toned down. However, Upsala then publishes a positive review of the pamphlet two days later, once again rejoicing in the negative reactions from Aftonbladet, describing the authors of The Swedish Line as a valuable contribution to the Swedish right.355 The already mentioned review by Fredborg’s former history teacher Bjarne Beckman is by far the most critical in Fredborg’s archive. It is the only text that thoroughly criticizes The Swedish Line for demanding closer cooperation with Germany and for framing German eugenics as a positive example. Beckman also criticizes The Swedish Line’s permissiveness toward Swedish national socialists and the antisemitism of the writers.356 Beckman also writes a reply to Torvald Höjers subsequent defense of Fredborg, stating that he did not intend his text as a review, but as an attack on what he considers to be his political opponents. He adds more criticism, especially demanding to know what the authors mean by the use of the word “living space”.357 The Swedish Line’s anti-capitalist elements stand in sharp contrast with how Fredborg describes his own political opinions and thought at the time of the pamphlet’s conception. In 1985, Fredborg

352 Fredborg et al., “Den Svenska Linjen,” 29–30. 353 “I Samma Båt,” Dagens Nyheter, September 4, 1939. 354 Fredborg, Destination: Berlin, 172. 355 “Sex Författare Söka En Roll?,” Upsala, September 3, 1940, Arvid Fredborg: Efterlämnade papper. 356 Beckman, “Tystlåten Ungdom Sjunger Ut.” 357 Bjarne Beckman, “Lektor Beckmans Svar,” Göteborgs Handels- Och Sjöfartstidning, October 4, 1940, Arvid Fredborg: Efterlämnade papper.

89 writes at length about his supposed political beliefs during this time. He states that already in the 1930s, he suspected that the Nazis were, in fact, socialists. This, because of their lack of respect for private property.358 If this is the case, then why is Fredborg the author of a text that bluntly states that “no modern person” any longer believes in the right to private property? The Third Reich, he goes on, stood “as far away from a free market economy as imaginable”. Then why did Fredborg support an integrated corporatist economic system that would melt industry and business together with the state? Fredborg continues to write that national socialism was a left-wing project and an outgrowth of socialism, just like communism. According to him, the social democrats have tried for years and years to hide this relationship to national socialism, but instead, they end up projecting it onto capitalism.359 However, here it is easy to see that Fredborg is himself projecting his participation in a fascist project onto the social democrats and the left at large. The simple-minded worship of sacrificial sentiments, discipline, the folk/people – in summary, its “strongly collective characteristics” and its neglect of the concept of the individual - is what characterized national socialism, according to Fredborg in 1985.360 Fredborg even goes as far as equating the idea of “folk community” with socialism.361 If he is correct, then he was also a socialist back in 1940. Nowhere, in The Swedish Line or otherwise, can a defense of “the individual” be found. Frankly, this is precisely the political opinion that characterizes Fredborg’s antagonists, whether it be Torgny Segerstedt or Eli Heckscher. Fredborg’s retroactive retouch of himself as a liberal, or as in any way concerned with anti-collectivism, lacks any foundation at all. Throughout Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939 and The Swedish Line, self-sacrifice is constantly framed as the preferable option to bourgeoise well-being and individual self-fulfillment – individualism is what the Fredborg circle argues has weakened Sweden, and what makes it unworthy of a future existence. Individual happiness as a goal is explicitly critiqued in The Swedish Line and is seen as conflicting with the protection of the Swedish folk tribe and the Nordic race. In Destination: Berlin, Fredborg also insists that it was not the higher classes who let themselves be misled by Nazism, but primarily the lower classes, the workers. National socialism was a “proletarian movement”.362 However, as already mentioned numerous times, in other parts of the letters Fredborg cites earlier in the very same book, Holmstedt self-identifies as a national socialist. The selective presentation of facts, when compared to the source material, is plain to see. Fredborg goes on to condemn the “virulent antisemitism” of Nazi Germany, also characterizing antisemitism as a working-class problem. Many workers of this time were, according to Fredborg, “no strangers to antisemitism”. Remarkably, these statements are found in the same book where he chooses to explicitly stand by Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939 (which “holds up today”) and certain parts of The

358 Fredborg, Destination: Berlin, 317–18. 359 Fredborg, 320–21. 360 Fredborg, 321. 361 Fredborg, 328. 362 Fredborg, 350.

90 Swedish Line, while also doubling down on his rejection of those who criticized him for antisemitism in the 1930s and 1940s. He writes that antisemitism has “deep German roots'' and while that may be so, the source material has also demonstrated that Fredborg is a perfect example of antisemitism with a distinctly Swedish origin. Fredborg and his circle have also demonstrated that antisemitism and fascism in Sweden during the 1930s and 1940s did not have to be geopolitically aligned with Nazi Germany. To explain these discrepancies, we need to assume that Fredborg either does not remember, is in denial about his former political projects, or is being deliberately dishonest and attempting historical revisionism. What has been made clear throughout this study though, is that we cannot, like some of Fredborgs apologists in the recent debates, rely on Fredborg’s explanations, nor can we take his so-called excuses or projections seriously. They contradict historical facts and must be therefore be disregarded in favor of what the source material says. In retrospect, it is clear that The Swedish Line’s critical attitude toward Germany has been over- emphasized, not least by Fredborg himself who has later implied that the arguments leveled at Germany were the core message of The Swedish Line.363 Germany is seen as an example in more cases than one – even though the German methods are described as excessive, their eugenic policies are described as a source of inspiration in The Swedish Line. Also, in an opinion piece published shortly before The Swedish Line, Fredborg reveals that the ambition to bring back and “place” the Estonia-Swedes back in Sweden (preferably somewhere in the Uppland archipelago) is inspired by the Nazi resettlement of the Baltic Germans.364 Like at Bollhusmötet and in Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939, Fredborg combined a skepticism toward Germany’s imperialistic ambitions with propagandistic antisemitism and a fascist ideology inspired by the Nazis – as many other fascists and Nazis did during the 1930’s. Oredsson points out how the arguments about Finland being Sweden’s eastern wing, as well as the perception of Sweden’s historical mission as a bulwark against the east, originate from figures like author , a pro-Nazi intellectual who was active in the National Association Sweden-Germany.365 The writings in The Swedish Line display an even more radical formulation of the ideas uttered at the tennis hall meeting and in Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939. Fredborg’s earlier skepticism about national socialism is nowhere to be found. That hesitance, clearly visible in the early campus debates and his correspondence with Holmstedt, has faded into the background and disappeared. Instead, we find, at the very least, an explicit permissiveness towards national socialism as long as it is particularly Swedish. And side by side with the unconditional demand for Swedish sovereignty is the willingness to work together with Nazi Germany. This is a natural continuation of the same sentiments that were expressed in Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939, where friendly relations with

363 Fredborg, 169–74. 364 Arvid Fredborg, “Estlandssvenskarna Åter!,” Nya Dagligt Allehanda, August 3, 1940, Arvid Fredborg: Efterlämnade papper. 365 Oredsson, Lunds universitet under andra världskriget: Motsättningar, debatter och hjälpinsatser, 88.

91 Germany are called for and where Germany's eugenic policies are characterized as an example for Sweden. These views did not suddenly appear during the 1940s or as a result of cooperating with Swedish Youth – they can be traced back to Bollhusmötet.

The political project of the Fredborg circle

This chapter concludes the study by summarizing the findings of the investigations of Bollhusmötet, Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939, and The Swedish Line. The research questions are answered, and the results are discussed.

Who were the people behind the meeting?

The tennis hall meeting was planned and set into motion by a group of nationalist students, foremost among them Arvid Fredborg, Thor Åke Leissner, Erik Anners, Louis Campanello, Igor Holmstedt, and Birger Ryding. They had somewhat different ideological backgrounds, but similar enough goals to organize around opposing the reception of ten Jewish medical professionals into Sweden after the November pogrom or “Kristallnacht”. For a full description of the people involved, as well as their participation in the projects intertwined with the tennis hall meeting, see the subchapter “Who were Arvid Fredborg’s friends?” Together, this political circle used their influence in student organizations to summon the tennis hall meeting and then coordinated a strategy as well as a rhetorical offensive that would shift the odds in their favour. A temporary alliance between the Fredborg circle, different Nazi organizations, and students concerned about job scarcity resulted in a victory over those who wanted Sweden to receive Jewish refugees. Their actions also inspired several such meetings and resolutions at other universities only weeks later. There is evidence to suggest that at least Arvid Fredborg had contact with these movements and aided attempts to repeat the success of Bollhusmötet elsewhere in Sweden. Their takeover of Heimdal and subsequent convergence around the tennis hall meeting created a political milieu that existed “unofficially”, without a proper organization of their own (Heimdal was seemingly not uniformly behind the political project of the Fredborg circle) but as a network of ideologically like-minded intellectuals. They cooperated with similar people in other parts of the country, like the organization Swedish Youth in Stockholm, and had a network of allies in the media, for example, their connections at newspapers Nya Dagligt Allehanda and Svenska Dagbladet.

92 What were their motives?

The short-term motive of the Fredborg circle was to bar Jewish refugees from entering Sweden, a motive grounded in the antisemitic beliefs of the Fredborg circle. The narrative framing Bollhusmötet as primarily motivated by a labor issue is not credible. In Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939 and The Swedish Line, the circle’s antisemitism is further elaborated on and expressed even more strongly, yet the line of reasoning still connects back to the arguments expressed at the tennis hall meeting. However, for the students without political affiliation, antisemitism was most likely a peripheral element that surfaced due to their primary concerns about labor issues. For the Nazi organizations, antisemitism was of course a core element, as Nazism is set apart from other variants of fascism precisely because of the centrality of race. The question arises – how central was antisemitism for the Fredborg circle? Was it a core element or an adjacent element in their ideology? On an individual level, this surely differed from person to person. However, if studied as a whole, antisemitism is a very central concern of the group. The investigation of the material shows how the Fredborg circle connected the influx of Jewish refugees with inevitable turmoil and racial tension from the very beginning, claiming that Jewish refugees carried these problems with them like bacteria. The propagandistic nature of the antisemitism expressed at Bollhusmötet already sets it apart from most political actors during the 1930’s, as large portions of Fredborg’s, Holmstedt’s, and Leissner's speeches are devoted to antisemitic theories, as are several articles in Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939 and The Swedish Line. The Fredborg circle connects the refugee question to an overarching view of the world as controlled and manipulated by forces scheming to smuggle in thousands of Jewish refugees into Sweden, racially corrupting the Swedish folk tribe and thereby destroying the “life force” of the Swedish people. The goal of this scheme, according to The Swedish Line, is an ultimate and complete “denationalization” of Sweden that would weaken the Western defence front against the Soviet Union. It could be argued that the antisemitism of the Fredborg circle was an adjacent element, supporting other, core conceptions and long-term goals. Unlike the proponents of race mysticism, the antisemitism of the Fredborg circle was not a goal in itself. On the other hand, just like militarization is described as both a strategy and a long-term feature of society in The Swedish Line, the strategy of eugenics, often formulated as a direct reaction to Jewish corruption of the folk/people, plausibly ends up being a permanent feature in the utopia that the Fredborg circle envisioned for Sweden. This eugenic project was framed as something important and essential to all other central goals of the Fredborg circle, even if it was done so in a negative sense – racial corruption via the Jews is portrayed as having the potential to undermine the very essence of the Swedish nation, both as a folk/people and as a country, making impossible every other objective stated in the pamphlet. Racial corrosion stands in direct conflict with the Swedish “life force”, so

93 the “quarantine order”, as Fredborg expresses it, must be upheld indefinitely. Antisemitism is thus both a strategy and a goal. Also, in The Swedish Line, one of the most important aspects of the heavy rearmament is the desired effect of giving the Swedish “life force” an essential boost so that the Swedish people will be primed, inspired, and ready to tackle the race question. In a sense, militarization is described as being in service of the following eugenic project. This centrality of race in the Fredborg circle’s project is a strong argument for defining antisemitism as a core element of their ideology, as well as the ultimate driving force behind Bollhusmötet. As Fredborg writes in Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939, it is “a cornerstone of our state-building.”366

What was their overarching political vision?

The convergence of these politically minded students, a group consolidation had already started with the take-over of the Heimdal association in 1937, created a political circle that not only planned and coordinated the tennis hall meeting but also developed and expressed their long-term goals and their political vision for Sweden. They formed an often misunderstood and short-lived political milieu that attempted to combine fascist politics with Swedish patriotism. The antisemitism of the Fredborg circle is just a facet of a much larger ideological project - a thousand- year-old mission that they believe have been neglected by the Swedish nation for too long, a call to Swedish greatness in the north. To the Fredborg circle, the rise of new states such as Nazi Germany anticipated the end of democracy and the beginning of a new form of nation-statism. In this new world, Sweden only had two choices - change or perish in the apocalyptic battle right around the corner. The upheaval would however also be an opportunity to form a Nordic great power independent of, but with friendly relations to, Germany. This Nordic power bloc would be able to act as a barrier towards the east and safeguard the west from the Soviet Union in a new post-individualist political landscape where the conception of the state, in Sweden and seemingly elsewhere, has developed into a socio-politically and economically integrated unity bound together by military structures that permeate all areas of civil society. This new form of state would subordinate individual strivings to the grander calling of national sacrifice and grandeur. Sweden’s role in this new landscape would not only be as the leading nation of a Nordic power bloc but also to be the central power of Northern Europe. However, to achieve this goal, a large-scale eugenic project with Germany as inspiration had to be conducted to protect Swedish blood from corrupting influences. This new militarized nation-state with the potential of

366 Fredborg, “Sveriges Väg,” 18.

94 military expansion to claim the Nordic “living space” would be the ultimate goal of the Fredborg group’s strivings As Torstendahl writes, when the split between the AVF and SNU happened, and Swedish nationalist fascist organizations gradually gravitated beyond the event horizon of the Germany- loyal Nazi milieu, some held on to their ideals and drifted willingly or unwillingly into Nazism. Others who were stuck in the middle either gave up their political beliefs in horror and disappointment or altered them to fit mainstream conservatism or liberalism.367 However, the Fredborg circle constitutes a third way. Through Bollhusmötet, Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939, and The Swedish Line they tried a different strategy, holding onto and going beyond the ideals of New Conservativism that were born in The National Movement and the SNU/SNF. Despite everything, they tried to pave the way for a distinctly Swedish branch of patriotic fascism. However, as this project would become unlikely in a post-World War II political climate, the group continued their political and professional careers in other areas.

Fredborg’s contradictions

After interpreting the political project of the Fredborg circle as fascist and potentially national socialist, this section offers some possible explanations for, and reflections on, Fredborg’s own largely differing narrative and the discrepancies between his retelling of events and the results of this study. The contradictions between Destination: Berlin and the source material can partially explain the skewed debate of 2000 and 2006, as it is the only widely available printed “excuse” from Fredborg, and one that has explicitly been cited in Fredborg’s defense (see the section “The race arguments interpreted” in the subchapter “The tennis hall meeting”). Upon closer examination, it becomes clear that Fredborg's retelling of the events is vague at best, factually incorrect and neglectful at worst. It is instead from the primary source material that a truthful narrative can be reconstructed. Yet the question arises, how do we make sense of the discrepancies? Fredborg’s narrative is difficult to categorize. It is not completely revisionist, nor is it a particularly truthful retelling. It is neither an effective cover-up nor is it a regretful confession. A shift from one narrative to another may have been occurring slowly for years in a barely conscious manner – after all, simply relying on the supposition that no one would check the sources Fredborg is referring to is quite a gamble (even if this gamble has mostly paid off so far, should this be the case). Perhaps the inconsequentiality can be attributed to ill remembrance, together with the fact that Fredborg’s antisemitism, eugenics, corporatism, anti-individualism were all adjacent parts of his ideology. According to this theory, the antisemitic and fascist elements of Fredborg’s ideology were important supporting pillars at the time, but as the years went by, they were discarded in favor of other adjacent concepts. If this

367 Torstendahl, Mellan nykonservatism och liberalism, 207.

95 theory is correct, the core element of the Fredborg ideology is obvious – monarchy and militarism. Seeing it this way, Fredborg at one point must have believed that a Swedish brand of fascist politics along with a eugenics program would be the best means to accomplish a return to a society based around obedience to the Swedish monarchy. However, that seems like a suspiciously large and specific package of ideological elements to endorse to hasten a rebirth of Swedish royalism. If this brand of fascism followed logically from Fredborg’s loyalty to the Swedish king, then royalism might as well be synonymous with fascism – a highly doubtful conclusion, especially considering the tension that has traditionally existed between fascist projects and the monarchy in other countries. Besides, it is hard to ignore the fact that Fredborg was always the member of his political circle that delivered the most ideologically charged speech or text, always rife with antisemitism and race theory, calling these elements a “cornerstone” of his ideology in Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939. It does not seem plausible to characterize these beliefs as adjacent elements. Another possible answer might be to consider Fredborg’s false narrative as a form of doublespeak (see “Theoretical perspectives”), or perhaps something closer to George Orwell’s original conception “doublethink” – the practice of holding two contradictory beliefs in your mind at the same time, switching between them when convenient, forgetting selectively.368 This concept is usually applied when analyzing the behaviors of citizens living in totalitarian states, as Orwell originally came up with the concept in the novel 1984. However, maybe Fredborg is expressing a reversed form of doublethink – instead of being a democratic citizen forced by the totalitarian surroundings to express fascist propaganda, he is a totalitarian citizen in a liberal democracy, forced to express conventional right-wing sentiments. Given the confusing and non-strategic nature of Fredborg’s arguments in Destination: Berlin, this seems more plausible. Skewing the narrative, admitting selectively, and relativizing his own opinions of 1939, this doublethink and doublespeak could be the result of hegemonic ideological repression. However, many of the omissions and discrepancies are so blatant that it is hard to imagine them being a result of any kind of spontaneous process. When writing Destination: Berlin, Fredborg has cited letters and documents in his archive so selectively and strategically that anything other than a conscious whitewash of his and his friend’s past seems unlikely. And while being extremely careful in these areas, Fredborg also makes positive references to articles like “The death of a people and the race question”, which does not only have a horrendous name but also contains an explicit defense of Aryanism and hardline race science. How can this possibly make sense? The only remaining theory is as follows - the denying of or admitting to fascist and antisemitic beliefs is not the point of Fredborg’s narrative. The point is instead to place it inside the bounds of conservative history. Looking closely at Fredborg’s writings in Destination: Berlin, he is not exactly claiming that he was just like the mainstream conservatives of the 1930’s – rather, he is claiming

368 Griffin, “‘Lingua Quarti Imperii’: The Euphemistic Tradition of the Extreme Right,” 44.

96 that the conservatives of the 1930s were really like him. It might not sound like much of a difference, but in reality, it is something else entirely. By claiming that his fascist project was just par for the course for any sensible conservative during this time, he weaves fascist political history together with mainline conservative history. By subtly placing his ideas inside the canon of conservatism, they are made available and accessible for anyone willing to revive them and claim them as conventional right-wing politics. This is also in line with the fascist entryism of The Swedish Line – the strategy of working from within the conservative milieu to change it in a fascist direction, mostly following the official coda of the milieu, yet still making a difference when possible. One of the aims of Destination: Berlin could be to push a fascist agenda by doing historical revisionism, not by obscuring or excusing Fredborg’s political sins, but by portraying his movement as normal. Judging by the recent debates, the project has been successful for a long time, offering Fredborg and his circle an undeserved antifascist reputation and a platform from which they could continue their political work for the rest of their lives. Maybe it is time to reconsider the heritage of the Fredborg circle within the mainstream right-wing movement, and like Ola Larsmo says, air it out once and for all.369

Nordic Fascism or National Socialism?

Like many nationalists in Sweden at this time, Fredborg faced the question of how to perceive “new Germany”. It was an easy call to make for those who were left-wing, Fredborg reflects, while he and other conservatively minded people had a difficult decision to make, especially since Fredborg strongly disliked the Weimar republic and believed that a change must come to pass, one way or the other. 370 This belief that a change must come, perhaps grounded in the historical fate of the Weimar republic itself, might have influenced the wider predictions in The Swedish Line - that liberal democracy would inevitably be replaced, by force or by free will, by Sweden’s doing or by some foreign power, with a new form of state. The Swedish Line, along with parts of Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939, provides a blueprint for this new state. As stated in the section “The Swedish Line interpreted”, the Fredborg circle’s project is recognizable as fascist. It may be argued that corporatism and notions of national unity were prevalent ideas in the conventional right-wing milieu at the time - however, the conservative conception of national unity was always more organic and moderate, as mainstream conservatives embraced the idea of societal interests as complementary (see the chapter “The conservative movement”). Conservatives in Sweden never truly embraced corporatism – they strived for a strong but small state, not an all-encompassing integrated state machinery. Nor did they believe that society hereto had developed in a direction where it was worth questioning the existence of Sweden

369 Larsmo, “Här Behövs Utvädring!” 370 Fredborg, Destination: Berlin, 41–42.

97 as a nation in the twentieth century. These revolutionary concepts of sociopolitical upheaval and the rephrasing of the entire Swedish raison d'être are at odds with conservatism on a basic ideological level (see the section “Conservatism” under “Historical background”). Thus, the recent debate about Bollhusmötet and Fredborg should be reformulated – the question is not if the political project behind the tennis hall meeting was conservative or fascist, but rather what kind of fascism best describes this movement? Looking at the source material in Fredborg's archive, and the letters exchanged with Holmstedt in 1935, we get some indications. Holmstedt’s ideology is national socialist in nature, which he more or less states explicitly, while Fredborg’s monarchism and traditionalism combined with fascist elements place him closer to something like Spanish Falange fascism. Fredborg’s admiration for the Franco-regime is well known – both in Destination: Berlin371 and later in life, like when he talks about his admiration of Franco in an interview in 1995, one year before his death.372 Interestingly, at some point in the years after 1935, Fredborg either changes his views or compromises with other forces within his political circle, as the project develops closer to Holmstedt’s original vision. Fredborg starts sounding less and less like a monarchist and instead more and more like a national socialist. Even though Holmstedt is not an author of Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939, Fredborg says in his autobiography that his texts were written after substantial discussions with Holmstedt.373 And even though Holmstedt is only a co-signer of The Swedish Line, the pamphlet is still the clearest expression of fascism and potential national socialism that the group produced. Investigation into other source material concerning The Swedish Line, Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939 and Bollhusmötet, like archival material from other members of the Fredborg circle, could shed more light on the ideological origins of the Fredborg group’s political project. This is a possible avenue for future research. As it stands now, the ideology of Bollhusmötet, Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939, and The Swedish Line analyzed together is closer to national socialism than any other variant of fascism. This interpretation is made primarily because of the centrality of race – race is the core ideological element of national socialism and is also a core element for the Fredborg circle. Their conception of race is, like in national socialism, a conception that includes antisemitism but goes beyond it, thus deviating from the tradition of race mysticism, where antisemitism is as a goal in itself. However, it should be said that there are some potential arguments against this conclusion - the hostility towards tradition that partially characterizes national socialism is largely absent from the Fredborg circle’s project. While the conception of an Aryan race is explicitly mentioned, it is done so only in Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939 and by a person with an otherwise very low level of participation in the circle’s activities. Yet, when examining other aspects of the Fredborg circle’s output, it is hard

371 Fredborg, 72. 372 Jan Eklund, “Stoppade Judar Och Bekämpade Hitler.,” Dagens Nyheter, May 24, 1995. 373 Fredborg, Destination: Berlin, 145–46.

98 to deny the elements of national socialism that are out in the open. Notable examples are the subordination of the individual under a mission of race, the descriptions of Jews as undesirable and a Nordic race (Aryan or not) as most superior, as well as the internal hierarchy within the race where naturally subservient personalities must give way to greater men, which can arguably be seen as the “double conception of race” that Berggren describes.374 Perhaps most convincing is the fact that enlightenment values like individual happiness, personal comfort, free trade, and democracy are rejected while an ancient ancestral calling to sacrifice is being operationalized in a highly technological manner (the attention given to technology and military development in Heimdal’s Yearly Review 1939 is astounding) that could paradoxically only result from enlightenment thinking – this is Jeffrey Herf’s precise definition of national socialism.375 We also have the fact that the Fredborg circle used German policy as an inspiration for some of their own policy suggestions, like their suggested approach to eugenics and the resettlement of the Estonian Swedes. Although the Nordic fascism of the Fredborg group is a uniquely Swedish expression of fascism that should not be squeezed into any pigeonhole where it does not belong, the similarities to national socialism in some major aspects of its ideology is hard to deny.

374 Berggren, Nationell Upplysning: Drag i Den Svenska Antisemitismens Historia, 55. 375 Herf, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture, and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich, 1–2.

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