https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryWhatIf/comments/1ij8566/what_if_sweden_joined_the_central_powers/
created by TheRedBiker on 06/02/2025 at 17:31 UTC
11 upvotes, 5 top-level comments (showing 5)
I've heard that Sweden was sympathetic to the Central Powers during World War I, although they ultimately remained neutral. If they joined the Central Powers, how would it have impacted the war?
Comment by Kiyohara at 06/02/2025 at 17:50 UTC*
9 upvotes, 2 direct replies
Honestly not that much. They could have helped the Germans invade Russia via invading Finland first, but Germany wasn't exactly struggling there. Even if they decided to take over Norway for some reason, the British were more than capable of expanding the Blockade to Norway's coast as well.
And Sweden didn't have much in the way of a population to offer either, or at least not enough for the war that was happening. The biggest thing Sweden had for Germany was the minerals they were already trading to Germany anyway.
Edit: Keep in mind Sweden only had a population of about 5 Million people in 1915. Even if they armed every last male in the country (from infant to day from the grave senior) it would still only by about 2.5 Million and that's an impossible number to arm given some of those people are literal infants and children. If we look at their total adult manpower, it's still only around a million or so (aged 18-40) and many of those will be needed for things like growing food and making munitions.
They just don't have the manpower to provide a huge army. Anything they provide is going to be dwarfed by what one of the larger *cities* the other sides own. London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, and Moscow all have populations close to the total population of Sweden at that time and those are not the only cities each nations has.
Comment by KnightofTorchlight at 06/02/2025 at 19:16 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
On the scale of impacting the war, not much. Despite being under the controversial, non-parlimentarian Borggårdsregering which was brought in under heavy handed actions of the monarchy following the Feburary 1914 Courtyard Crisis with a specific mandate to address defense issues and having doubled the size of the Swedish Army, had a field army barely in the double digits at its peak level during the war (13,000 men). Even if they quickly double that again which, even if we ignore the massive political controversy starts running into critical issues of scaling with logistics, officers, etc., puts them at fielding thw equivalent of a single particularly bulky but low quality modern division. Any offensive effort would get chewed up and spat out quickly (especially since its land border with the Grand Duchy of Finland has poor logistics and a climate likely to produce major attrition if things go wrong, especially in winter). This is especially true as unlike other powers who were rapidly able to up-arm thier wartime divisions with substantially more firepower per man (adding machine guns and artillery), Sweden lacked the industrial capacity to do so and would be outgunned.
Now, if total mobalization was implimented Sweden had theoretical plans to conscript 200,000 men, but that would be little more than a mob in uniform as the underlying systems to supply, support, and command those numbers did not exist.
Thier navy has a bit more potential to be useful: Sweden had a good sized military fleet that would have at least been able to check the Russians in the Baltic. They had 12 coastal battleships, even if some of them were notably aging. However, the Swedish fleet by its structure was built for Baltic defence and could not do much to contest the British blockade.
Speaking of the blockade, we should move onto the impact in Sweden itself which would be far more substantial. As already mentioned, Hammarskjöld's Borggårdsregering was already polarizing and on shaking footing with the population. While historically the outbreak of The Great War lessened this domestic tension, at least temporarily, Hammarskjöld and Gustaf V actively pulling the country into the war would simply alienate the liberals and social democratic who had beem sidelined. Sweden faced substantial issues with domestic economic shortages and unrest even as a neutral power with access to international trade and not having to carry the economic burden of substantial domestic mobalization, the lose of export revenues as raw material needs to be fed into the war industries, etc. This domestic privation would be noticably greater if Sweden was actively at war, and with it likely comes a swifter and more rapid dramatic rise in domestic unrest from a population, who now have more reason to see the government who brought them into this war as the source of thier woes. Historically, these tensions did result on violent hunger riots in 1917 that were only defused by the fall of the Hammarskjöld government and his successor (Carl Swartz) agreeing to substantial domestic reforms and reaching an agreement with the Entente to shift trade and allow more imports to flow back into Sweden under British oversight. Under wartime conditions, the failure to support the military budget that lead to Hammarskjöld's fall and the required events to placate the rioters and the social democrats and many of the liberals likely does not occur, leading to left wing radicalization as the population realizes the only way to get change is to tear down the government and the authoritarian monarchy supporting it.
Like some feared, Sweden probably has a Feburary Revolution moment as the streets riot and the army: its conservative character long since diluted from the mass influx of newly mobalized troops, sides with them instead of the government. If the monarchy does not accept it there is limited civil war Germany would try to intervene in. The new government quickly tries to open peace with the Entente to stabalize the situation, though it has its internal divisions between liberal and moderate social democrat reformists and the radicals who've commited to full socialism. The longer until peace and domestic stabalization (including an end to German intervention and Monarchist resistance) the more potential the later has to harness the continued hardship to rise to power.
Comment by TheTrueXenose at 06/02/2025 at 22:43 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I could see open Finnish rebellion, but would happen after WW1?
Comment by Justin_123456 at 06/02/2025 at 17:54 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
As a starting point it would have opened a new front against the Russian on the border with the Grand Duchy of Finland. It’s difficult to imagine this being a very mobile front, however, given the obvious logistical difficulties of operating in Northern Sweden and Finland.
The largest strategic effect is going to be on trade. Despite Sweden’s partiality for the Germans, the Entente was able to ship a steady flow of supplies from Norwegian ports, and the Swedish rail network into Northern Russia.
On the other side, Sweden, along with Denmark and the Netherlands, was one of the key re-exportation nodes that the Germans relied on to circumvent the blockade.
Comment by kryptokoinkrisp at 06/02/2025 at 21:46 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Sabaton would have plenty of inspiration for yet another Great War album.