My numismatic adventure №15 - Sweden 1940
WW II coins:
The coin itself
Sweden 1940 (KM# 798) 25 ORE – Nickel-Bronze, (2.4gr) ; mintage - 2,333,040 ; My valuation – 2EUR
Obverse: 
Reverse: 
(you may click on the coins to enlarge the image)
A bit of history
The late 30’s saw the big industrialization of Sweden, with lots of major railways being built at the time.
Also Sweden was one of the only countries that managed to maintain neutrality during the whole of the war.
During the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Sweden allowed the Wehrmacht to use Swedish railways to transport weapons. Sweden also became a refuge for anti-fascist and Jewish refugees.
The Swedish army during the war is one of the smallest and one of the most outdated.
During the war, Swedish industry had to supply an increased share of its own domestic goods owing to the British blockade in the North Sea.
In 1940, the Swedish Home Guard was created. It were small groups of former soldiers who were equipped with rifles, machine guns, ammunition and medicine.
Sweden did align itself with Finland, when the war begun in 1939 between the latter and the USSR. The country was not directly attacked by anyone during the war, however, it was accidently bombed by the USSR, and its ports were blockaded by Germany. This all led to some food shortages. There were also petroleum shortages and other strategic resources.
My thoughts
During the war the Swedish press was well known for its freedom of speech, which caused many countries including Germany to try and do something about it.
As we can see from history, the country not only tried to maintain neutrality, but also tried to maintain a trading status during the war, by signing agreements with both the axis side and the allies’ side. From what I can judge, it didn’t succeed.
More so, Sweden was known to supply iron ore to Germany during the war period and if this traded didn’t occur, the war might have gone very differently.
On the other side, Sweden did accept many refugees and some of its troops did fight on the British side during the war.
It has been accused many times by historians for not thinking about the moral principles and maintaining neutrality.
The coin is fairly simple and doesn’t carry much value. Its common and all the citizens had reach to such similar coins and in fact to all the other coins too.
A rail accident – Sweden, 1940
All photos of coins are from my own collection
Historical source 1 ;
Yay, finally it's Sweden's turn! :D The smallest Swedish coin denomination I have is 50 öre.
Reading this historic bit of your post made me feel a little bit proud of my new home country. I hope that Sweden will manage to stay neutral in case of a new war in Europe.
I have quite a few Swedish coins actually. Sometimes i find it hard to tell the difference between the Scandinavian coins =)
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