Hitler's Swedes

Sweden was neutral during the Second World War, but despite this, thousands of Swedes wanted to participate in the war - the largest group in Finland, where over 10,000 Swedes applied to fight against the Red Army. Another much smaller group which saw action against the same enemy was the Swedish SS volunteers. While the Danish and Norwegian SS volunteers are fairly well known today, their Swedish counterparts remain less well known. Still, they saw action on both the Eastern Front and NW Europe, and participated in some of the bloodiest clashes: the initial stages of Operation Barbarossa, the winter of 1941/42, the battles of Kursk, Arnhem, Normandy, Narva, the Warsaw uprising, the Cherkassy and Kurland pockets and, finally, the end in Berlin. Compared to many other groups of volunteers, there was never an official recruitment drive in Sweden, which is why only some 180-200 men enlisted.