14th July 2007
Some ideas seem to have a history of their own, appearing at different times in different circumstances.
A British Foreign Office document on 'German reactions to defeat' dated 2nd January 1945, included the following reference to 'super-Sweden' as a suitable role for Germany after the war:
"Germany must be encouraged to aim at being a super-Sweden, cleaner, better planned and healthier than any State ever was before, with better social, medical and educational services and a higher standard of living than any State ever had."
Encouraging Germany to become a 'super-Sweden', implied that the country could become prosperous, with an excellent welfare system, perhaps even a socialist government, but would have no military capability, no diplomatic influence, and should stay well clear of any possible future conflict between a communist and totalitarian East (ie the Soviet Union and Eastern European satellite states) and an individualistic and democratic West, (ie the US, Britain and Western Europe), much as Sweden had remained neutral throughout World War Two.
Last week I attended a conference on Britain and Europe in the 20th Century, and was surprised to hear a similar reference to 'greater Sweden', in a paper given by Helen Carr from the University of Keele, on events which took place more than twenty years later: Britain's second application to join the European Community in 1967.
Helen Carr described how a senior official in the British Foreign Office had written a paper outlining three foreign policy options for Britain: subservience to the United States, joining the European Community, and 'go it alone' which was also described as the 'Greater Sweden' option.
The same role, of becoming a 'super-Sweden', which the British Foreign Office had considered right for Germany after the war, was now dismissed as undesirable for Britain in 1967, as it meant giving up a world role and the ability to influence the affairs of other countries. This was unthinkable at a time when officials in the Foreign Office and British Governments in general, both Labour and Conservative, still thought of Britain, which had only recently lost its empire, as a great power in the world.
At first I thought these two references to 'super-Sweden' and 'greater Sweden' were pure coincidence, but it then turned out that both Foreign Office papers, in 1945 and 1967, were written by the same person, Sir Con O'Neill, who was to become head of the German section of the Foreign Office and then, twenty years later, played a leading role in the British applications to join the European Community.
Does this tell us anything about British foreign policy and the mindset of Foreign Office officials? I am no expert on the British applications to join the European Community, but the 1945 paper on 'German reactions to defeat' is reprinted in full in a book which I have read, published in 1997: 'Conditions of Surrender: Britains and Germans witness the end of the war' edited by Ulrike Jordan. The paper is also discussed in an article in the book by the German historian Lothar Kettenacker, titled 'British Post-war Planning for Germany: Haunted by the Past.'
It is clear from reading the full paper, that Con O'Neill was already equating National Socialism in Germany with Communism in the Soviet Union, at a time when the war was not yet over, when Russia was an ally of Britain and the US, without whose support winning the war against Nazi Germany would have been far more difficult, if not impossible. His concern was that there would be a revival of German militarism, and that Germans were somehow naturally inclined, by national character and instinct, to become allied with the communist East, rather than the democratic West.
This seems strange in many ways, as for the previous three years Goebbels had been loudly publicising the view that the British and Americans should cooperate with the Germans in mutual defence against 'Bolshevism'. The same line was taken by the short lived German interim government of Admiral Dönitz. In a speech on 1st May 1945, after saying that "The Führer has appointed me as his successor" Dönitz continues: "It is my first task to save the German people from destruction by the advancing Bolshevik enemy. For this aim alone the military struggle continues." On 2nd May the foreign secretary in the Dönitz government, Count Schwerin von Krosigk, expressed the same views in a speech on Germany as a 'Bulwark against Bolshevism'. This included one of the first references to an 'iron curtain'. "In the east, the iron curtain is advancing even further, behind which the work of annihilation proceeds hidden from the eyes of the world."
As Lothar Kettenacker said in his article in the book: "Apparently it did not occur to British officials that the Germans were not at all inclined to trust the Russians, whose land they had devastated, or the Bolsheviks, against whom Goebbels had railed for the last three years."
Here is an extract from the 1945 paper by Con O'Neill. It shows how common it was for British diplomats and Foreign Office officials to think in terms of national stereotypes, their anthropomorphic tendency to attribute personal characteristics to countries, and how the actions of the government of a country were explained in terms of the supposed instincts and beliefs of the people as a whole.
"National Socialism had been no more than a special form of organization of the instincts and capacities of the German people. Other forms of totalitarian organisation almost equally unpleasant and effective may occur, for those instincts and capacities will remain largely what they are....
Moreover, future German recollections of this war will not all be tinged with defeat and disaster. Just as vividly they will remember how near they came to victory. They will remember the battles they won, the countries they struck down, the heroes who led them in success of perished in the hour of seeming triumph... Nothing will stop the Germans from believing they had the finest army in the world, and succumbed only to superiority in numbers and material. Nothing will stop them taking pride in their accomplishments in a pursuit which they so manifestly excel. Nothing, finally, will stop them wishing to re-create armed forces when they have been deprived of them...
To say that National Socialism is unlikely to remain, or become again, a popular creed in Germany does not mean that Germany is likely to become democratic. Germany will once again have the choice - or so it might seem - between the ideals of the West and of the East, between an individualist and a collectivist system.
An attempt may now be made to answer the question: would Germany, in another war crisis, be found on the side of the East or the West? Circumstances can alter in any case. But if German inclinations and calculations are to determine the matter, then the answer must be as pessimistic as most of the other conclusions so far arrived at in this paper, Germany will be found on the side of the East, because her political and social ideas and instincts will align her with the East rather than the West....
Germany must be encouraged to aim at being a super-Sweden, cleaner, better planned and healthier than any State ever was before, with better social, medical and educational services and a higher standard of living than any State ever had."
With hindsight we know that nothing came of the 'super-Sweden' idea. Germany was divided into the Bundesrepublik in the West, closely allied with Britain and the US in NATO, and the DDR in the East, closely allied with the Soviet Union. It is therefore all the more intriguing to find the same idea cropping up twenty years later, in another paper written by the same person, but this time as an undesirable option for Britain, instead of a desirable role for Germany.
As a postscript, I attended a lecture a year ago given by Timothy Garton Ash, who said that the same idea, this time described as 'offshore Switzerland' rather than 'super-Sweden', was now seen as a highly attractive option for Britain, among some of those on the right of British politics who were advocating leaving the European Union. Sweden itself, of course, is still prosperous, but joined the EU in 1995.
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