171. Memorandum of a Conversation, Stockholm, November 27, 19551
PARTICIPANTS
- Major General R. I. R. Akerman, Chief of the Defense Staff, Swedish Armed Forces
- Major General Ridgely Gaither2 (for part of time)
- John M. Cabot, American Ambassador
At Colonel DeLoach’s3 stag dinner for General Gaither, I had several opportunities to talk with General Akerman, particularly after dinner. Our talks might be summarized as follows:
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General Akerman asked Colonel DeLoach, at a time when the latter was present, if Kommendör Henning, Chief of Swedish Intelligence, had had an opportunity to talk with General Gaither. Colonel DeLoach replied that Kommendör Henning had entertained General Gaither at lunch today and that the two held a lengthy conversation of mutual interest.
I mentioned to General Akerman our interest in strong Swedish capabilities for defense. I said that Sweden’s policy was one which had to be determined by Sweden exclusively, in the light of its national interests, and that since Sweden had decided that an alliance-free policy best suited the national interests, that was that as far as we were concerned. In any event, I was not certain that in the event of general war Sweden’s neutrality might not be more valuable to us than active Swedish participation on our side, provided Sweden was prepared to defend her neutrality strongly. I mentioned that the Netherlands, where I had been stationed from 1936 to 1938, had tried to follow an alliance-free policy during both world wars. Shortly before the first, the Dutch got wind of the fact that the Germans planned to swing through the Low Countries in the event of general war, and they promptly launched a major effort to build up their defenses. They were so well prepared by 1914 that the Germans respected Dutch neutrality. The Dutch thought the same policy would serve their defenses, and catastrophe followed. I hoped that Sweden would never suffer in another war as Holland had in the second World War through failure to maintain a strong defense posture.
My comment seemed to strike home and General Akerman mentioned with some perturbation the heavy drain on the Swedish defense budget resulting from Swedish plans which called for stockpiling of all supplies needed to carry on a war for four months. The Swedes [Page 492] of course did not expect to give up fighting at the end of four months, but they did expect they could get supplies from outside in that time. [9½ lines of source text not declassified]
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General Akerman then spoke of Sweden’s hope to get technical help from us, particularly in the atomic field. He mentioned that Egypt and India are apparently now to get atomic help from Soviet Russia and it was, therefore, not as if we would be giving Sweden anything more than a number of other nations already had. Our policy of atomic secrecy seemed to be self-defeating. I mentioned the atomic library which I had just presented on behalf of my Government to Atomenergi AB and said that although this was a library regarding the peace-time use of atomic energy, it would certainly help the Swedish scientists and showed that we were loosening up on atomic information. I added that in other fields I had strongly urged when home last May4 that we give Sweden such help as we properly could in her technical problems since I felt very strongly that a strong Swedish defense was in our interest. I hoped that some progress had been made along these lines and urged General Gaither to second them in Washington. General Gaither warmly agreed with me and said he would do what he could. [1½ lines of source text not declassified] General Akerman pointed out that even a few leads from the United States in regard to technical problems would be of immense benefit to the Swedes since it would enable them to avoid squandering their relatively slender resources on fruitless research.