Swedish Intervention In Norway

Not just about Swedish humanitarian efforts during the final year of WWII.

Although the focus of Escape from the Third Reich by Sune Persson is the one indicated by the subtitle, Folke Bernadotte and the White Buses, a rather substantial amount of the book deals with the plans for Swedish military intervention in Norway 1945.

The original Swedish title of this book, Vi åker till Sverige: de vita bussarna 1945, first published in 2002, also did not quite capture how rich this book is. Sune Persson´s book is simply put one of the most important ones for any student of the Nordic states during WWII, along with John Gilmour´s Sweden, the Swastika and Stalin. Why do I say so? Well, aside from providing a convincing account of Count Folke Bernadotte´s "salami-slice strategy" during his negotiations with SS leader Heinrich Himmler, and the resulting transports to Sweden of many thousand prisoners of the SS, this book has a chapter entitled "Operation Rescue Norway!". In it you will find both the so-called "police troops", in effect an Allied infantry division established from 1943 on Swedish soil, and the more than 6,400 Swedes who 1944-45 enlisted in what became the "Swedish Norway battalion". Persson explains how the "police troops" were used, first in Arctic Norway thanks to US transportation aircraft, and why the Swedish volunteers were not allowed by the Norwegian government to participate in Norway´s liberation. This in spite of that, to quote from Person´s book: "...General Eisenhower was of the opinion that the Germans would put up organised resistance in Norway [and] that Norway could be reached effectively only through Sweden...". Persson also writes about the plans to use the regular Swedish Armed Forces in a joint western Allies & Sweden attack on the Germans in Norway. Thus an operation without the Soviets.

This English edition of Sune Persson´s book (translated by Graham Long) has an addition to the Swedish edition, a short but important introduction to English readers, written by Brian Urquhart. The number of photographs is not large, fifteen, but they are well chosen.