Sweden: Paradise on Earth?

[Pekka]

Right right ok.

[David Floyd]

Agathon,

You must be joking. The lesson of WWII is that surface ships cannot hope to hold out against air power. Why do you think that the British were so desperate to stop the Bismarck before it reached air cover provided by German naval bombers?

Get a clue man, the wrecks of the Prince of Wales and Repulse are testament to what would have happened had the Home Fleet attempted to defend the Channel in the face of German air superiority.

Naturally, but look at it like this.

The British Home Fleet and other elements of the Royal Navy sail down the west coast of Britain, out of range of the Luftwaffe and still under friendly air cover. The Admiralty times the fleet movement such that the Home Fleet will enter German air cover during the night, and will cover much of the distance to the Kriegsmarine transport concentrations (such as they are) while the Luftwaffe can't really strike.

Meanwhile, the RAF prepares one major sortie with all of its remaining fighters it can put in the air to cover the Fleet. A massive air battle takes place over the Channel, and while the Luftwaffe might well prevail, they would certainly not be able to go after the Royal Navy at the same time.

While the air battle is going, 6-8 battleships along with a couple of dozen cruisers and several dozen destroyers are shooting up everything in sight in the Channel - troop transports, Kriegsmarine escorts, etc., etc.

No one is arguing that this would be a virtual suicide mission, but it would most likely WORK. Any German transport capacity would be devastated, and any German troops stranded on England would be forced to surrender.

Germany's navy just was not large enough to cover an invasion of England. Period. Even air superiority probably wouldn't have been enough. What the Germans needed was either a large force of battleships to meet the Royal Navy in a gun battle, or a force of carriers able to engage the Royal Navy at a distance. Germany had neither.

As for the Prince of Wales and Repulse, this was a completely different case. The British sent these two ships (a BB and a BC) to try to disrupt Japanese landings in Malaysia. While that may sound similar to what I am describing above, the similarity ends there.

The PoW and Repulse both had to travel across thousands of miles of open ocean, with no possibility of friendly air cover, and the two ships did not really constitute a sufficient force to defeat the IJN in the area anyway. Unlike the Germans, the Japanese were fully capable of covering their landings properly.

GePap,

And yet, after the US was defeated and forced to leave AND Vietnam stopped China and got rid of the psycho-maoist Khmer Rougue regime, all the Soviets got in South East Asia was naval bases, which did nothing to shift the international balance.

True, but the US military intervention did at least show support for US allies in the area, such as Thailand, Australia, and even South Korea, as well as showing the Soviets that the US would definitely intervene to prevent communist takeovers in the region.

I still don't support the war, but looked at in a certain light I think it made sense.

[St Leo]

Originally posted by BeBro
*inserts generic oil joke*

Silly kids. The oil's in Norway, not Sweden. George W should invade Norway.

[Gangerolf]

Originally posted by Kitschum


According to this article (with map),

http://www.smb.nu/pos/97/07_per_albin3.asp

Sweden were far gone in preparing for an assault across the sea against the Germans in Sjaelland in Spring 1945, if the Germans hadn't surrendered. Apparently, an invasion force of 60 000, including 4 000 Danes, plus (for Sweden) sizeable sea and air forces, was pulled together to drive out the 28 000 Germans there. No idea how viable it was

A "Swedish D-day". Interesting. Well I don't know exeactly what kind of equipment they had or how much was left of the German navy in the area etc, but it doesn't sound that far-fetched...

The article also claims that a gallup poll found that the Swedish people were against intervention in Norway by 47% to 33% even "if the Germans started massacres", which seems slightly odd to me and perhaps a measure of the effectiveness with which the Swedish government's neutrality stance diffused to the public

Oh that's nice. But of course, fighting 400'000 well trained Germans to the bitter end would be a massacre in itself...
The threat of massacres was real. In 1945 the German boss in Norway, Reichskommissar Josef Terboven had 10'000 civilian hostages he wanted to shoot, but was (ironically enough) stopped by Hitler and Quisling.

[Combat Ingrid]

Originally posted by St Leo

Originally posted by BeBro
*inserts generic oil joke*

Silly kids. The oil's in Norway, not Sweden. George W should invade Norway.

Just got a flashback from "Wag the dog", when they discussed why the US should go to war against Albania:

-Why Albania? What did Albania ever do to us?
-What did Albania ever do for us?

[Berzerker]

That wasn't my point at all, I was just trying to corner Berzerker with his claims of bad so-called socialist countries living off the so-called capitalists' hard work.

That is, to simply show that the system in nordic countries is viable.

Viability cannot be measured by a few years of economic growth due to a devastated Europe. The US is also running into economic trouble because it lost its post WWII advantage while increasing the welfare state. We keep our SS system afloat with a liberal immigration policy.

CO

Did you read my last post at all? Our goverment spendings did not exlude the military. And our Nordic neighbours are rich despite war damage, NATO membership AND welfare systems.

Scandinavia suffered very little from WWII compared with other countries in Europe. That created an opportunity for Scandinavian countries to get rich off rebuilding the war torn countries while producing welfare states.

Aggie

But it is still doing better than the United States. Read the opening post. These are the facts.

Why do people keep wanting to compare the US with Sweden? We have a mixed economy here too. And I saw no evidence from the article that Sweden is doing better than the US, on the contrary, Sweden has dropped from 4th to the teens in wealth. I saw evidence of the problems facing Sweden because of its system So what has been their solution? An increase in the welfare state because Sweden is doing so well? Nope, reductions in the welfare state to become more competitive because it isn't doing so well.

Krop

You're mixing apples and oranges. Are you trying to make a fruit salad?

Did I say the hypocrisy of Euros who make that argument is proof of Sweden's problems? You did the mixing, not me.

LC

You're seriously overestimating Sweden's military strength in 1941/42. They Germans estimated, in 1943, that the occupational forces in Norway alone should be enough to, should it become necessary, defeat and occupy Sweden, and while that might have been overly optimistic, it does say something about the relative strengths.

The amusing bit is that we might have ended up fighting against Finland in a such scenario ...

The Finns were just itching to invade Sweden because Finns just loved Hitler? C'mon... As for what Sweden should have done, the Finns withstood at least 2 Russian invasions but Sweden could do nothing in conjunction with the allies even after Barbarosa made Germany vulnerable? I imagine the allies would have invaded mainland Europe sooner if they could get the Scandinavians to attack Germany from the north.

[Combat Ingrid]

Originally posted by Berzerker
As for what Sweden should have done, the Finns withstood at least 2 Russian invasions but Sweden could do nothing in conjunction with the allies even after Barbarosa made Germany vulnerable? I imagine the allies would have invaded mainland Europe sooner if they could get the Scandinavians to attack Germany from the north.

Why should we have attacked the nazis and not the USSR?

[Berzerker]

Because you would have had to go thru the Finns and/or several hundred miles of German troops to get to them? And because Russia became an "ally" when Hitler attacked them?

[Pekka]

Not really. They would have only had to say 'no wait, we changed our minds and we want to fight too', and that's it. The distance wouldn't have been a problem. You do realize that we are not hostile nations? . They would have not attacked us and we would have not attacked them, simple.

Strategically, if SU had pressed us down fast enough, there could have been a possibility to take out Sweden, in theory. Nazis in Norway, what do you want, you want to take control of the whole NOrthern Europe. No reason to stay and stop, better to control the region and have some advantages of that. Except of course attacking a neutral country could have been a bit of a problem politically, but hey it wasn't an obstacle before

[Berzerker]

Also, because Russia was devastated by the German invasion and barely hung on for its survival. Why attack them?

[Combat Ingrid]

Originally posted by Berzerker
Because you would have had to go thru the Finns and/or several hundred miles of German troops to get to them?

That didn't stop our volunteers from going there
There were very good reasons to attack the Nazis, but we also had very good reasons to attack the USSR. However, both options would put us in trouble, furthermore, I don't think it would have been wise to declare war on both of them

[Combat Ingrid]

Originally posted by Berzerker
Also, because Russia was devastated by the German invasion and barely hung on for its survival. Why attack them?

[Berzerker]

You do realize that we are not hostile nations?

Hehe

I'm sure at the time (and maybe even in reality) it was better for Swedes to stay out. It sure worked out well for them considering, but I strongly suspect that if Sweden informed the west it would declare war on Germany in conjunction with an allied invasion of mainland Europe the Germans would have folded sooner. That would have allowed the west to move east sooner before the Russians could counterattack and grab almost half of Europe.

Anyway, thats a different debate from the issue of Sweden's system. Btw, I like the idea behind Sweden's system, we pay half our money here in taxes and don't get very much at all in return. I like systems with low corruption rates, my main problem is the forced egalitarianism, not welfare (although that seems to be how the Swedes pay for welfare).

[Pekka]

Right, if you have high taxes, you must have returns for it, that's pretty basic.

Had they attacked Germans, it would have become SUPER complex situation. It's nto that simple really.

[Berzerker]

Ingrid, look up the stats on what the Russians and Germans lost during the invasion, not the counterattack. It was the worst large scale massacre in the history of the world.