Sweden applied Nazi race laws in wartime, study shows

Haaretz reports:

Sweden helped the Nazis stop Germans and Jews marrying and suppressed criticism of Hitler and reports of atrocities, according to new research suggesting neutral Sweden accommodated the Nazis more than previously thought.

"We are finding new areas of collaboration which we didn't know about," said Stockholm University historian Klas Amark, who coordinated the research commissioned by Prime Minister Goran Persson in 2000 in connection with a Holocaust conference.

The series of studies released yesterday into Sweden's Nazi links shows it did not just avoid invasion by selling iron ore to Adolf Hitler and letting his troops through to invade Norway. Swedish pastors stopped marriages between "Aryan" Germans and Swedish Jews for violating the Nuremberg laws promoting Aryanism. This was done on the advice of the foreign ministry.

"From 1937, Swedes wanting to marry Germans of so-called Aryan blood had to give assurance that none of their grandparents belonged to the Jewish race," reads a study on Sweden's church by Anders Jarlert of Lund University.

The Swedish welfare state and Nazi Germany have much in common.