When I was a kid I lived in Sweden. Every day I could see the Swedish soldiers on bicycles going to and from their barracks on the old gallows hill. Sweden is a neutral country and were so also under WWII. Refuges from all over Scandinavia could come to Sweden, and thanks to that the Danish Jews were almost all saved.
After the war they remained neutral while Norway and Denmark joined NATO - the German occupation of both countries pawed the way for that decision.
If you read Swedish newspapers, like I do, you will know that the threat from Russia is what occupies the Swedish elite (not Muslim emigrants). This is not a new thing. When I was a child there was several submarine hunts in the Swedish stone archipelago (The reef garden in Swedish). In Denmark we probably laughed a bit about it - it seemed a bit paranoid - that is... until a Soviet Submarine ran aground outside of Karlskrona, the Swedish Naval base since 1680.
Now the Swedes has just recently made a brochure about what to do if war or disaster strikes for the whole population, a new version of the one they had under WWII. In the USA Sweden is often depicted as a country of weak, politically correct lefties - maybe they are most of those things - but they are not weak - I suspect that they are the least weak peoples on earth. So I do take it serious when they matter of factly write like this:
Now they will probably soon be part of NATO too, as that would be the reasonable thing to do if you are afraid of Russia... I would hope that Russia could join so we didn't need all this crap.
I went down to the harbour to look at Sweden today, but it was too hazy in the hot sun to really take images of Sweden so here are some windmills.
My friend @shortcut has started to write some posts every morning - #morgenseiten he calls it - morning-pages. Here is his explanation of the project:
It goes like this: you shall each morning write from the soul, anything going through your head.
He writes a lot more, but this is the essence :) (Read his first morgenseiten post here)
I have decided to try the same. I write from the top of my head every morning or late morning if I have been sleeping late. I only correct typos and make a headline afterwards. Else everything is left as written. Expect some of it to sound like stage directions.
In my country, Sweden is ofted depicted as a place second only to paradise itself. For real. Actually, here, being "like Sweden" or "like a Swedish" is kinda saying "you are at the very top".
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Yes, that is also true for the US. Either they are happy-land or they are doomed.
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In US History within the United States, they typically covered WWII and the aggressors, Russia, Germany and Japan. From the classes that I have gone to, they did not review the other countries that were in northern europe.
So we do not know much history when it comes to Denmark and WWII, etc. It's always interesting to read up on a country's history, especially if you plan to visit.
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Not sure you can call USSR for an aggressor (except if you are Finnish or Polish). For most of the war they fought to defend their territory and I tend to agree with the historians who view their enormous sacrifices as the most important factor that won the war. As I remember more than 20 million USSR people died - in comparison it was round about 500,000 US citizens.
As for Western Europe most of the countries was occupied by the Germans. France, Poland, Scandinavia, the Balkans. Italy and Spain were already fascists. So there was some sort of peace, where the Germans took out the Jewish population and killed them, until the local resistances forced a more war-like situation.
What a shitty time!
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My brief history of Europe during WWII mentioned that the USSR split the take over of Poland with Germany. (That is why I mentioned them as an aggressor) But Germany was definitely the evil one...
Have you seen the HBO movie series Band of Brothers?
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Yes, in that sense they were complete arseholes. They also did the same to the Baltic nations and attacked Finland - luckily the Finns beat them against all odds.
I haven't seen it, but everybody I know did and liked it.
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That's reassuring, but perhaps an attack by another country isn't the only way to surrender and lose control...
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Swedes are the Germans of Scandinavia, following principles before practical measures.. until they realise that they were wrong and turn 180° around. I am blowing it up, but I think they tend to have greater polarity just like in Germany. The other way around they despise us Danes because we are individualist anarchists :)
I am not worried for either Germany or Sweden on behalf of their political climate, the hellish scenario is that climate change makes the middle east uninhabitable.
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I'm not sure, but I think it was Winston Churchill who said something like, "The Americans always do the right thing, after they've tried everything else." ;-)
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:)
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