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Nine months ago Sweden felt she could look on the swelling pride of Germany and Russia with relative complacence. She was the geographical centre of a ring of seven well-disposed, small, but collectively considerable, Baltic and Scandinavian States: Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Denmark, Norway. One or another of them might be threatened, but it was hardly plausible that a nation ringed around with seven such neighbors would have to face the worst.
Last week seven out of seven of Sweden's neighbors had been raped, Poland, Finland, Denmark, Norway by arms, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia by threats. Sweden was the only untouched survivor of the group and the march of events pointed now straight at her.
The Nazi invasion fortnight ago of Denmark and Norway, if it had been successful, would have completely cut off Sweden from the rest of the world and have left her at the mercy of Germany. That danger was apparently averted for the time being by the landing of Allied expeditionary forces in northern Norway, but the failure of the German plan to achieve complete success put Sweden in an even more difficult spot.
If the Allies succeed in pushing back the German Army in Norway and disrupting its communications across the Skagerrak, Germany will have urgent military need to send supplies and support through Sweden. Conversely, the Allies, if they succeed in taking Narvik, might be tempted to seize the Swedish iron-ore mines at Kiruna and Gällivare. Sweden did not think this likely but fear of it might give Germany another motive for invasion.
Any of these things might force Sweden to fight at any time. But if none of them took place Sweden's problems were not yet over. If Allied armies gain possession of her outlet to the Atlantic through Narvik and Trondheim, the Allies are virtually certain to put severe economic pressure on Sweden to induce her to cut ore exports to Germany. If Sweden had to yield to such Allied demands, Germany, again, might attack her.
Fear of Arms. At the same time that Sweden's strategic problem thus grew acute, her military problems multiplied. Today Germans were in Copenhagen, a short ferry hop to the Swedish mainland.
East of Oslo the Germans were on the Swedish frontier, at points which flanked Sweden's prepared defense zones (see map). Farther north a German force last week reached the Swedish frontier on the railroad line from Trondheim that crosses the narrow part of Norway, and cuts into middle Sweden, turning southward toward Stockholm. From Copenhagen the Germans could pour an endless column of men into Sweden's flat and defenseless bottom. From new air bases in Denmark, Nazi bombers can more easily than ever lay eggs of death in Swedish cities.
This week all these threats were made more ominous by a new threat. Over the cities of southern and eastern Sweden and the districts behind the frontier of Norway dozens of snooping Nazi planes appeared. Anti-aircraft fire drove some of them off. Three or four were reported shot down and one fell in flames before a Swedish pursuit plane.