World War II and the Scandinavian Monarchies
Across Europe, even among those monarchies which survived World War II,
none had as much influence as they did before the conflict. The war
itself, however, was not always the direct cause of this but,
nonetheless, it came at a time when wider events over a number of years
brought about such an outcome. The fact is that the monarchs who reigned
during the time of the Second World War had considerably more
authority, regardless of any actual constitutional changes, than those
who came to the throne after the conflict was over.
This was certainly
true in the Low Countries but, while perhaps less noticed, was equally
true in the monarchies of Scandinavia. Even the one country which
managed to avoid actually participating in the war, the Kingdom of
Sweden, was not untouched by the conflict or unaffected by the wider
repercussions of both the First and Second World Wars. The monarch on
the throne throughout the period was His Majesty King Gustav V who is
remembered as the last Swedish monarch to date to intervene in the
affairs of his government.
In 1907, when he came to the throne, King Gustav V had extensive legal
authority in political matters. However, in the reign of his father,
parliament had more strongly asserted itself and, originally, King
Gustav V went along with this new way of doing things. This changed with
the coming of World War I. The King favored increasing Swedish military
strength while the recently elected Liberal government did not. When a
crowd of concerned citizens demonstrated in front of the palace in favor
of strengthening the Swedish military in case the country were to
become engulfed in the upcoming conflict, the King acted on his own to
address the crowd, whose views were in accord with his own, to assure
them that this would be done. The Liberal prime minister objected to
this, King Gustav V responded that he was well within his rights to
speak to his subjects on such a matter, as both their sovereign and
commander-in-chief of the armed forces, which prompted the government to
resign at which time the King appointed a more conservative
administration to replace them.
That would be the last time that a Swedish monarch would directly
intervene in government. The collapse of Russia, spread of communism and
the economic disaster that accompanied the end of World War I, worked
to pull Sweden dramatically to the left. In 1917 the King tried to
appoint another conservative government but found no support, the most
power being held by what amounted to democratic socialists on the one
hand and less-than-democratic socialists on the other. Still, World War
II played a part as well and in a way related to World War I. The Queen
consort, Victoria of Baden, was a German and in the First World War the
King was widely believed to be sympathetic with the German Empire and
the cause of the Central Powers. Similar accusations would be made
concerning the King and Nazi Germany in World War II which certainly had
a more negative impact on his popular perception than any possible
sympathy on his part for the Kaiser would have had. Little to nothing on
that score can be proven but the allegation alone was enough to do
damage.
The most serious accusation in this regard, though again, it has never
been proven, revolved around the King interfering in government again.
The issue was the 1941 demand from the Germans, at the time of the Axis
invasion of the Soviet Union, to allow German military forces to move
from Norway, through Sweden to their fellow Axis partner of Finland.
According to the prime minister, King Gustav V intervened in this
matter, threatening to abdicate if the government did not accede to the
German demand. Anti-royal controversialists often mention this in
conjunction with another allegation, accusing the King of sending
congratulations to Hitler for his victories against the “Bolshevik pest”
of the Soviet Union. Others have claimed that the King similarly
favored allowing Allied troops to move through Swedish territory but
that it was the government which refused and there is no doubt that the
King also spoke up on behalf of the Jews and that he tried to arrange
peace talks to end the war early on.
All of this was used to smear the character of King Gustav V after the
war ended in an Allied victory. However, few people care to consider the
basic fact that if the Germans wanted to move troops through Sweden
they were certainly capable of doing it whether the Swedish government
agreed or not. Given the depleted state of the Swedish armed forces, the
Germans could have conquered the country and occupied it with as little
difficulty as they did in Denmark and Norway. At a time when Sweden was
literally surrounded by Germany, German allied Finland and German
occupied Denmark and Norway, the British could have done nothing to help
them and Hitler could have wiped out Sweden easily if they had defied
him. Under the circumstances, a refusal would have been hailed as noble
and courageous in the rest of the world but it could easily have
resulted in invasion, occupation and the total loss of Swedish
independence. If the King did intervene to urge the government to let
the Germans move through, in such a situation, it would be hard for any
rational person to say he did wrong.
There was, in any event, no shortage of gossip and allegations against
King Gustav V, even among his fellow monarchs. There were rumors that he
tried to interfere in the Norwegian succession, bypassing the King and
Crown Prince for the royal grandson, today’s King Harald V and King
Haakon VII of Norway reputedly referred to the King of Sweden as ‘the
old scoundrel’ and believed him to be pro-German. The fact that Sweden
would have been much the worse off by taking a hostile attitude toward
the Germans or the fact that a great many Jews found refuge in Sweden
because of its neutrality, did not amount to much in the post-war years
where mere mention of the word “Nazi” and any hint of being in the least
bit tainted by anything less than a zealous commitment to their
extermination is sufficient to cause people to switch their brains off
and become totally irrational. After Gustav V died in 1950 at age 92 he
was succeeded by his son King Gustav VI Adolf and by the next decade
republicanism and the total abolition of the monarchy had become
mainstream. By the time of the next monarch, new constitutional changes
saw the Swedish Crown stripped of absolutely all residual powers, which
did tend to thwart some of the arguments of the republicans as there is
no president on earth with less power than the King of Sweden.
The Kingdoms of Denmark and Norway are a different story. Both were
pulled into World War II for the same reason. The short version is that
Winston Churchill was so convinced the Germans would violate Norwegian
neutrality that he decided to violate it first, laying mines in
Norwegian territorial waters. A landing by ground forces was also
planned by the whole British campaign in the far north was an utter
fiasco. Germany responded with swift and overpowering force. To move
against Norway, Germany had to go through the Kingdom of Denmark. After a
long period of decline from the ranks of being a major power, as well
as a long period of peace which many people thought would last forever
(something seemingly everyone is likely to do), the Danes were
practically powerless to resist the German invasion. So, they basically
didn’t and the Kingdom of Denmark was occupied in less than 24 hours.
The Kingdom of Denmark was supposed to be Germany’s “model
protectorate”. They assured the Danes that they were friends, not
conquerors and that their independence would be respected with German
occupation forces remaining only so long as was necessary for the war
situation. The Danes didn’t buy it and soon began carrying out acts of
sabotage. Their monarch, King Christian X, condemned such actions, as he
was bound to, but also defied the Germans as far as he was able. He
refused to enact anti-Semitic legislation they pushed, refused to hand
over Danes to the hands of German justice who had been caught in acts of
sabotage or helping Jews escape to Sweden and he famously continued his
solitary horseback rides every morning through the streets of
Copenhagen. The Germans wanted him to stop, particularly as these came
to be occasions of outbursts of public support for the monarchy and
Danish patriotism, but the King refused. When the Germans demanded he
accept a German escort to act as his bodyguard on such occasions, the
King famously said that every Dane was his bodyguard. King Christian X
did finally have to stop though when he was thrown from his horse and
injured in late 1942 (allegations that the horse had Nazi sympathies
have not been corroborated).
By the end of World War II and the German occupation, the Danes and
their monarch never seemed to be closer. It was a stark contrast to how
the unfortunate King Leopold III of the Belgians was treated for also
remaining in his country during the German occupation. King Christian X
of Denmark was admired and respected by almost everyone and his prestige
seemed to have never been greater. Yet, even in the oldest monarchy in
Europe, which has weathered the republican storm better than most with
its very deep roots, no monarch after King Christian X would ever have
quite the same level of power and influence in state affairs. It is hard
to see how the war played a part in this change, yet that it happened
cannot be denied. The monarchy before the war was very different from
the monarchy after the war, or, at least, after Christian X. Under his
successor, King Frederick IX, the Kingdom of Denmark began to change,
becoming, as it was known, a “democratic monarchy”.
In truth, however, the wartime prestige of the monarchy was no more than
King Christian’s ‘Indian Summer’. After World War I there had been a
dispute over the territory Denmark had lost to Prussia in the 1864 war.
The Danish government wanted the inhabitants to vote on whether they
wished to rejoin Denmark while Danish nationalists wanted the territory
annexed outright. King Christian X agreed with annexation, intervened
and the government fell which the King replaced with a more conservative
temporary government until the next election. This was the “Easter
Crisis of 1920” and it resulted in a fierce left-wing backlash against
the monarchy led by the Social Democrats. Faced, for the first time in
her ancient history, with the loss of the Danish monarchy, King
Christian X had been forced to retreat, dismissing the government he had
just appointed and accept his status as a virtually powerless monarch.
The war years boosted his prestige but it did nothing to change the
political situation. The monarch retains some considerable powers on
paper but Danish judges have interpreted these to belong to the King’s
government and not the King (or Queen in today’s case) personally.
One other point of contention for Danish monarchists, widely overlooked
in foreign lands, which resulted directly from World War II was the loss
of the Danish Kingdom of Iceland to republicanism. From 1918 to 1944
Iceland was an independent kingdom in personal union with the Crown of
Denmark. However, in May of 1940 British troops invaded and occupied
Iceland. The local government protested this violation of their
neutrality but made no effort to resist. The British later handed the
keys over to the United States and in 1944 a referendum was held which
resulted in Iceland becoming a republic, severing all ties with the
Crown of Denmark. King Christian X showed impossibly good grace by
sending them his congratulations but many on the right in Denmark felt
betrayed and not unjustly so. As they were under German occupation at
the time, they could hardly argue their own case for maintaining their
existing relationship with the island and even if there was nothing
untoward about it, one cannot escape what political pundits today would
call very “bad optics” to have a referendum during wartime while being
occupied by a foreign army which is at war with the foreign army
occupying the ‘home’ country.
Finally, any talk of Iceland, monarchy and World War II, will usually
produce some mention of the so-called conspiracy for a Nazi monarchy. I
mention it only because someone is bound to speak up if I do not but
there really is not much to say on the subject. It was never a
conspiracy, never something that was going to happen, it did not happen
and so is hardly much of a story. An important, though often left-out
point to make clear though, is that this suggestion of a Nazi monarchy
in Iceland was made *before* the Germans had occupied Denmark (seat of
the existing Icelandic monarchy) and thus also some time before the
Allied occupation of Iceland. There is some variation in accounts of
this episode but the usual version is that a group of pro-Nazi
Icelanders approached the German government about making Prince
Friedrich Christian zu Shaumburg-Lippe the King of Iceland. The Prince
had been a fairly early member of the Nazi Party, joined the
Brown-shirted Storm Troops (SA) and rose to be an assistant to Dr.
Joseph Goebbels in the Propaganda Ministry. He was in fact, considered
to be on the leftist, socialist, side of the Nazi Party. In any event,
it didn’t happen. The Prince said Goebbels favored the idea but Foreign
Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop did not. However, regardless of that, it
is not as though Iceland was ruled by a pro-Nazi party at the time, so
such an offer would have had no real meaning anyway.
Last, but not least, we have the situation in the Kingdom of Norway. The
Norwegians were the most recently independent of the Scandinavian
monarchies, having detached themselves from a personal union with Sweden
in 1905. The people voted to establish a monarchy rather than a
republic and invited Prince Carl of Denmark to take the throne as King
Haakon VII of Norway. He realized that there had been a sizable minority
who had favored a republic and the recent democratic process which had
brought about the break with Sweden was a sign of the times so he knew
from the outset that his royal powers would be limited and was partly
chosen for the very reason that he made no objection to such
restrictions. By 1928 he was obliged, by the democratic process, to
appoint a government led by the Norwegian Labor Party which advocated
abolishing the monarchy (something later dropped from their program).
World War II spread to Scandinavia, as mentioned, because of events in
Norway. Denmark was a mere stepping stone, invaded and occupied within a
day. Norway would take somewhat longer for, as Norwegians at the time
proudly said, “we are a longer country”. The British effort to establish
a Scandinavian front was a total fiasco, very ill-organized and the
German attack was swift, efficient and overpowering. King Haakon VII
knew his country stood no chance and immediately made plans, upon the
outbreak of war, to establish a government-in-exile in Britain. The
Germans did their best to capture him and the Royal Family but in an
arduous series of movements, they were able to elude them and ultimately
take a British warship into exile. The German attack had begun on April
8 and the last major Norwegian stronghold fell on May 5 with the King
and party leaving the country on June 7. The King and Crown Prince Olav,
the symbols of Norwegian resistance, went to England while other family
members were sent to safety in the United States. Pockets of Norwegian
forces carried on fighting for much longer and, of course, Norwegian
forces in exile and underground resistance movements persisted in
fighting for the duration of the war.
It would be hard to overstate the significance of the King during this
time of crisis for Norway. He had taken the lead in rejecting the German
demands to submit peacefully to their occupation, expressing his desire
to abdicate if the government chose to cooperate with the Nazis and as
the King he was the living symbol of Norwegian government legitimacy in
the fight and in the years of exile. Unlike Denmark, there was no room
for any doubt at all that the fate of the Norwegian monarchy depended on
an Allied victory. The Germans had a willing client in Vidkun Quisling
standing ready and after efforts to coerce the government in Norway to
depose the King, the top German official simply declared on his own that
the King of Norway had forfeited the Crown and that he, nor any of the
Royal Family, had any right to ever return to Norway again. King Haakon
VII was the symbol of Norwegian resistance to the Germans, he was also
very much the “voice” of the resistance due to his BBC radio addresses
to Norway and thanks to him the Norwegians were able to contribute a
great deal more to the Allied war effort than most people realize. He
was extremely popular as a result of all of this and when he died in
1957 he was mourned almost as much in Britain as in Norway.
His son and successor, King Olav V, had played a major part in the
Norwegian war effort, being appointed an admiral in the Norwegian navy, a
general in the Norwegian army and in 1944 the Norwegian Chief of
Defense. He oversaw the Norwegian contribution to the Allied armed
forces and at the end of the war was in charge of dealing with the
disarmament of the surrendered Germans. Nonetheless, by the time he came
to the throne, things had already changed from what they had been in
the war years when his father was so identified with Norwegian
patriotism that “H7” became the symbol of the resistance. Although,
legally, the royal powers did not change, having been limited at the
outset, there was definitely a new, more republican, sentiment about the
country. When King Haakon VII had come to the Norwegian throne, he had
been given a proper coronation. For King Olav V there would be no
coronation, only a church service after his swearing-in ceremony which
was officially boycotted by the ruling Labor Party (though some members
attended anyway).
Like his father, King Olav V never made any trouble for the politicians
but, seeing which way the winds were blowing perhaps, he also made an
effort to be seen even more as “down to earth”. The closest his father
ever came to a confrontation was taking a drink of illegal alcohol after
coming into a hotel, cold and soaked. King Olav V would not even go
that far, even using public transportation during the energy crisis of
1973. He could also often be seen driving his own car. All of this had
the intended effect on public opinion as this egalitarian style caused
him to be dubbed, “the People’s King”. Again, to be sure, the current
Norwegian monarchy started out a much shorter chain than their neighbors
in Sweden or Denmark but, nonetheless, one cannot escape the fact that
the style of the monarchy even in Norway was rather different in the
first reign after the war that it had been before the conflict, whether
the war actually had any impact on it or not.
What we can see is that many monarchs had an increased status during the
war years due to the state of emergency that, of course, ended when the
war was over. There was also an increase in national unity because of
the war which, likewise, ended when it was over. This was something that
some monarchs commented on as being regrettable. The status of many
monarchies also saw the status of the monarch decline with the status of
the country due to things like de-colonization and the polarization of
the world into an American camp and a Russian camp. European monarchies
also often saw leftwing parties come to power after World War I, then
brought back after World War II and with a huge influx of American aid
money which made unsustainable spending programs and social welfare
states take root which governments have become more desperate to try to
uphold. It is certainly no coincidence that the leftist parties pushing
these policies have invariably been either openly anti-monarchy or at
the very least possessing a very republican mentality even if not openly
calling for the establishment of a republic.
