Germany's "Final Solution" was intended to include Denmark 1 October 1943. The result, as it turned out, was a failure. Less than five hundred Jews were caught and deported to the concentration camp at Theresienstadt, while over seven thousand managed to escape across the Sound to Sweden. The Danish case was viewed as something of a sensation already by contemporaries, and to this day it still draws international attention. The rescue operation has been the object of numerous fanciful and romantic embellishments, as popular perceptions have tended to focus on the humanitarian selflessness of the Danes. The matter, however, was more complex, making the Holocaust in Denmark something unique. One of the crucial factors was the reluctance of the local German authorities, manifested by passivity or direct subversion, to implement the plan. Another was the declared willingness of the Swedish government to harbour the refugees. Research, generally, has been preoccupied with the course of events and the motives of the Danes and the Germans, while the role of the Swedes as a political actor has been poorly illuminated. The present study addresses this deficiency, concentrating on the Swedish Foreign Office (Utrikesdepartementet) as the object of inquiry and focusing on the relationship between humanitarian motives and raison d'état in the formation of Swedish policy. The analysis is preponderantly based on the archives of the Swedish Foreign Office, supplemented with source material of Danish origin including diplomatic documents from the Danish Foreign Office. Swedish diplomats working at the forefront of the rescue operation came into close contact with many refugees whose fate is delineated in the documents. Here history can be read from below.

The assistance of the Swedish government was deployed along several lines. Prior to the operation, a demarche was taken vis-a-vis Berlin on 1 October in the form of a protest and a proposal to intern the Danish Jews in Sweden. When that was rejected, the Swedes broadcasted their offer on the radio 2 October. Simultaneously, the navy was ordered to shield and pick up refugees at sea. The realization that the Swedish border now stood open, whereas it had been closed to refugees during the first years of the war, was a crucial factor in organizing the successful flight across the sound. The refugees, whose numbers were increasing at an explosive rate, were gathered up along the coast by the Swedish authorities with a commitment that surmounted every administrative and financial obstacle. Lastly, the Foreign Office, working closely with the Swedish ambassador in Copenhagen, attempted to save those Jews living in Denmark who had family connections in Sweden by granting them Swedish citizenship or issuing them a temporary passport. Here, however, the results were modest: only some three hundred persons were saved in this way. This was partly due to the obstructiveness of the occupation authorities, and partly to the fact that those in question quickly decided to risk illegal escape rather than the uncertainty of legal departure.

The efforts of the Swedes in October 1943 followed naturally from the break with prior policy marked by the help given to Norwegian Jews in November and December 1942 and by the unsuccessful attempt earlier in 1943 to rescue twenty

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thousand Belgian and French Jewish children, the so-called Adler-Rudel plan. The October operation, however, represented a quantitative and qualitative leap that pointed ahead towards the help given to the Hungarian Jews in 1944 and concentration camp prisoners in 1945. The initiative taken in October 1943 should be viewed against the background of the change of strategy, both in domestic and foreign policy, undertaken by the Swedish government subsequent to the turn of the tide in the war in 1942-43. The government veered away from its pro-German policy of neutrality, which had been designed to keep Sweden out of the war, but which increasingly had set it at odds with the Allies, Norway, and a growing anti-German public opinion at home. Humanitarian aid had always had a central position in Swedish foreign policy, and during World War II it was implemented on a broad scale. Now the October initiative became one of the instruments for securing Sweden a place in the new world order, which, judging by the German military defeats, would be dictated by the victorious Allied Powers. A positive refugee policy would likewise improve Sweden's image in the eyes of the neighbouring Norwegians and Danes. In the summer of 1943 Sweden was both militarily and economically stronger than it had ever been since the war began, and the government calculated that the Germans would stop short of a confrontation over the matter, while the people would support it. And that is what happened. Recognizing the insignificance of the matter as compared to the benefits of Sweden's continued neutrality, Berlin confined itself to verbal threats, while in Sweden articulate opinion, spearheaded by press and church, rose up with one voice to condemn the atrocity. The Allies and other neutrals reacted vigorously and favourably to Sweden's policy, conforming completely to its primary aim. This was true, of course, also of Denmark. However self-serving the shift in foreign policy, the study leaves no doubt about the sincere indignation and commitment with which the Swedes engaged in the operation. Taking traditional tendencies of Swedish society and Swedish foreign policy into consideration, a central role must be assigned to the government's genuine humanitarian motives. But the study also makes clear that the dictates of realpolitik provided optimal conditions for the humanitarian effort, since the refugee operation coincided perfectly with the prime strategic objective of securing good will. Realpolitik persisted, however, in exercising decisive constraints on the operation. This is evidenced by the restrictions that deference to Germany imposed on practical policy, as reflected in the cautious conduct of the Swedish ambassador in Berlin as well as in other efforts to avoid provoking the Germans. This illustrates how distant the Swedes still were in the autumn of 1943 from the later escalation of humanitarian aid in 1944/45.

The article also treats a number of subsidiary themes. It reveals the uncertainty with which both the Danish and the Swedish foreign offices operated, primarily as a result of German disinformation. It points up, more generally, the significance of misperceptions and wishful thinking, i.e., the subjective situation as a parameter of action for rescuers and rescued alike. It shows how unprepared the opponents of the "Final Solution" were to face a situation where traditional diplomacy was displaced by power, fanaticism, lies and chaos. Herein lies one of the reasons why the machinery of the "Final Solution" ran with such relative ease in occupied Europe. 

Translated by Michael Wolfe